I 


GIFT   OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


THE   FORKS   OP  THE  ROAD 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE    FORKS    OF 
THE    ROAD 


BY 


WASHINGTON   GLADDEN 

AUTHOR  OF    *'  LIVE  AND   LKAEN,"    "  COMMENCBMENT 
DAYS,"  ETC. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  reser'^ed 


COPTEIGHT,  1916, 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  April,  1916. 


J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


^. 


CONTENTS 


OHAPTER 

I.  The  Scandal  of  the  Centu- 


RIE8 

1 

11. 

The  Real  Thing 

9 

III. 

The  Organic  Law  of  Human 

Society 

23 

IV. 

The  Blessing  and  the  Curse 

34 

V. 

The  Kingdoms  of  Antichrist  . 

42 

VI. 

The  Theology  of  Militarism 

62 

VII. 

The  Forks  of  the  Road  . 

87 

VIII. 

Where  is  the  Church?    . 

112 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/forksofroadOOgladrich 


NOTE 

This  book  has  been  awarded  the 
prize,  offered  by  the  Church  Peace 
Union,  for  the  best  essay  on  War  and 
Peace. 


vii 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE 
ROAD 


THE  SCANDAL  OF  THE 
CENTURIES 

THE  outbreak  of  the  present  war 
was  greeted  by  a  chorus  of  ex- 
clamations over  the  failure  of  Christian- 
ity. That  such  an  eruption  of  violence 
should  occur  in  the  midst  of  a  civiliza- 
tion claiming  to  be  Christian  seemed  to 
onlookers  in  the  neutral  nations  some- 
thing unnatural  and  shocking. 

Such  a  reaction  of  the  popular  mind 
against  the  phenomena  of  war  was  a 
little  surprising.  Was  the  world  ever 
before  shocked  to  an  equal  degree,  by 

B  1 


^        .    TJ[E  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

the  outbreak  of  any  war?  I  cannot 
answer  with  assurance,  but  I  do  not 
recall  any  record  of  a  similar  revulsion 
of  feeling  at  the  imminence  of  warfare. 
The  gates  of  Janus,  not  often  shut  in 
past  centuries,  have  generally  been  flung 
open  with  a  shout.  We  may  count  it 
a  note  of  progress  that  they  were  opened 
this  time  with  a  groan  that  was  audible 
all  round  the  world.  Former  generations 
have  accepted  war  as  a  matter  of  course ; 
this  generation  was  inclined  to  regard 
it  as  something  anomalous  and  mon- 
strous. And  this  revulsion  of  feeling 
was  directed  toward  the  coexistence  with 
Christian  civilization  of  a  war  as  fierce 
and  deadly  as  this  was  sure  to  be.  That 
such  horrible  enginery  of  hate  and  de- 
struction as  the  nations  had  been  making 
ready,  should  be  let  loose,  in  the  twen- 
tieth century  after  Christ,  to  ravage  our 
fertile  fields,  and  lay  waste  our  homes. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  3 

and  destroy  our  fairest  works  of  art, 
and  strew  our  plains  with  the  mutilated 
corpses  of  millions  of  our  young  men,  — 
while,  on  every  side  church  spires  were 
lifting  crosses  toward  heaven,  and  men 
baptized  in  the  name  of  Christ  and  going 
forth  armed  to  kill  one  another,  were 
praying  to  the  universal  Father  in  the 
words  that  Jesus  had  taught  them  — 
all  this  was  a  spectacle  so  ghastly,  so 
revolting,  so  utterly  insensate  that  the 
world  held  its  breath  in  horror.  It  was 
the  scandal  of  the  centuries. 

It  was  not  true  that  Christianity  was 
in  any  direct  way  responsible  for  the 
present  war.  The  organizations  which 
assume  to  represent  Christianity  have 
been,  indeed,  responsible  for  many  bloody 
wars.  From  the  days  of  Constantine 
down  to  modern  times  the  church,  led  by 
popes  and  bishops  and  inspired  by  monks 
and  missionaries,  has  often  been  on  the 


4  THE  FORKS  OF  THE   ROAD 

battle-field.  Some  of  the  fiercest  wars 
of  history,  like  the  Crusades  and  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  have  been  fought 
by  direct  command  of  church  officials 
and  under  their  leadership.  It  is  not  so 
with  the  present  war.  It  does  not  appear 
that  ecclesiasticism,  in  any  of  its  forms, 
had  anything  to  do  with  inciting  this 
outbreak.  The  interests  involved  were 
not  connected  in  any  obvious  way  with 
the  Christian  churches.  The  moral  sense 
of  mankind  did  not  blame  the  churches 
for  bringing  on  the  war;  the  world  was 
shocked,  first,  because  of  the  coexistence 
of  Christianity  and  war,  and  second, 
because  of  the  promptness  with  which 
the  Christians  in  all  the  belligerent 
nations  rushed  into  the  war.  The  moral 
sense  of  mankind  —  or  what  some  of  us 
would  like  to  recognize  as  the  moral 
sense  of  mankind,  in  its  highest  expres- 
sion —  appears  to  have  reached  a  phase 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  5 

of  development  at  which  it  regards  the 
coexistence  of  Christianity  and  war  as 
a  grotesque  anomaly.  The  two  insti- 
tutions would  seem  to  be  mutually 
exclusive.  Yet  here  is  war,  on  the  most 
stupendous  scale  known  to  history, 
spreading  itself  over  a  large  part  of  the 
civilized  world,  and  the  Christian 
churches,  in  all  the  countries  immedi- 
ately affected,  are  not  only  offering  no 
effectual  resistance  to  it,  but  are  giving 
to  it,  in  sermons  and  prayers  and  the 
consenting  voices  of  great  congrega- 
tions, their  heartiest  approval  and  sup- 
port. I  think  that  "the  moral  sense  of 
most"  has  a  right  to  be  shocked  and 
scandalized  by  this  state  of  things  and 
to  call  for  an  explanation. 

Let  us  look  at  the  fact  of  war  as  it  is 
reported  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
nation  most  closely  allied  to  our  own. 
We  will  not  attempt  the  dreadful  recital 


6  THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

of  the  physical  facts  of  carnage  and  de- 
struction, we  will  only  listen  to  the  report 
of  what  is  going  on  in  the  minds  of  the 
people.  These  are  the  words  of  Professor 
L.  P.  Jacks,  a  teacher  of  Philosophy  in 
Oxford  University,  and  editor  of  "The 
Hibbert  Journal":  "Only  a  year  ago 
we  looked  out  into  a  future  which  was 
comparatively  assured.  We  were  laying 
our  plans,  buying,  selling,  marrying 
and  giving  in  marriage,  like  the  men  of 
old  before  the  Lord  rained  fire  on  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah.  Our  sons  were  growing 
up  and  we  were  arranging  their  careers. 
Today  our  sons  are  in  arms  and  under 
orders  from  the  front,  and  as  they  gather 
round  us  for  the  parting  feast  we  thank 
God  that  we  cannot  raise  the  veil  of 
the  future.  Our  families  are  threatened 
with  possibilities  of  which  we  dare  not 
think.  Thus,  at  the  very  center  of  our 
life  the  menace  begins,  and  it  runs  out- 


THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  ^ 

ward  until  every  idea,  every  habit  of 
mind,  every  interest,  every  conviction 
has  received  its  share  of  the  shock  — 
If  you  would  conceive  the  state  of  our 
national  psychology  you  must  imagine 
how  you  yourself  would  feel  and  think 
if  everything  you  had  taken  for  granted 
and  reckoned  as  secure,  —  your  country, 
your  home,  your  family,  your  property, 
your  life,  your  ideals  were  suddenly 
menaced  and  bidden  to  defend  them- 
selves from  destruction.  A  frontier  set- 
tlement, in  the  old  days,  which  had  just 
received  intelligence  that  a  powerful 
tribe  of  Red  Indians  was  on  the  warpath 
in  the  immediate  vicinity;  a  populous 
city  feeling  the  tremors  of  an  earthquake 
which  had  already  shattered  its  next 
neighbor  —  these  are  images  which  may 
help  the  reader  to  understand  the  psycho- 
logical disturbance  of  England  at  the 
present  hour.     I  do  not  mean  that  there 


8  THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

is  panic;  for  there  is  none.  England  is 
calm,  resolute,  and  prepared.  Her  teeth 
are  set  and  she  has  braced  herself  to  meet 
a  tremendous  shock."  ^ 

If  we  who  dwell  in  the  neutral  coun- 
tries have  less  reason  for  such  disturbing 
terrors,  there  is  still,  for  us,  abundant 
cause  for  solicitude  and  alarm.  We, 
also,  are  confronting  the  wreck  and  over- 
throw of  all  that  is  sacred  and  precious. 
When  nearly  all  the  civilized  nations, 
comprising  two-thirds  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  globe,  are  in  a  death  grapple, 
and  the  ideas  and  institutions  on  which 
our  own  national  existence  rests  are 
fighting  for  their  lives,  it  does  not  require 
a  prophet  to  convince  us  that  we  also 
are  facing  the  most  tremendous  reality 
that  the  human  race  has  ever  been 
called  to  encounter. 

1  "  Yale  Review,"  April,  1915. 


n 

THE  REAL  THING 

WHAT  is  this  dread  reality,  this 
"  Real  Thing,"  which  the  Oxford 
professor  finds  us  all  "up  against"? 
He  does  not  define  it,  except  by  its  effects. 
It  is  a  profound  dislocation  of  the  exist- 
ing order  of  things.  It  is  a  threat  of 
devastation  and  chaos.  Nay,  it  is  more 
than  a  threat,  the  work  of  ruin  is  in 
relentless  progress ;  millions  of  men  have 
been  slaughtered,  hundreds  of  towns 
and  cities  destroyed,  thousands  of  homes 
razed  to  earth,  noble  temples  and  monu- 
ments of  art  defaced  or  demolished, 
millions  of  acres  of  fertile  lands  laid 
waste,  and,  worse  than  all,  the  seeds 
of  murderous  hate  have  been  sown  in 
9 


10         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

the  hearts  of  men,  which  threaten  a 
dire  harvesting.  It  will  take  the  world 
long  years  to  recover  from  the  economic 
losses  which  it  has  suffered  already, 
and  the  work  of  devastation  goes  on, 
with  no  end  in  sight.  And  who  can 
predict  the  abatement  of  the  enmities 
which  make  useful  human  intercourse 
impossible.  Such  are  the  effects  of  this 
Thing  which  we  are  confronting,  but  what 
is  the  cause?  Is  there  not  a  cause?  Is 
it  something  occult,  unaccountable,  pre- 
ternatural? Is  it  some  elemental  phe- 
nomenon, like  an  earthquake  or  a  cyclone  ? 
No:  that  indolent  assumption  must 
not  be  entertained.  This  "Real  Thing'' 
is  a  historical  fact ;  it  is  nothing  magical 
or  mystical;  it  must  have  historical 
causes,  and  we  can  find  them  if  we 
search  for  them. 

Professor  Jacks  ventures  one  explana- 
tion.    "The   cause   of  the  present  war 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  H 

is  quite  simple;  some  nation  or  nations 
^wanted  to  fight.  And  I  venture  to  think 
that  so  long  as  any  powerful  nation 
wants  to  fight,  no  human  arrange- 
ment, no  scheme  of  federation  or 
international  peace  will  prevent  it  from 
fighting."  1 

But  this  is  too  simple.  The  wanting 
to  fight  must  be  explained.  There  was 
a  tremendous  accumulation,  somewhere, 
of  inclination  to  fight,  —  an  inclination 
that  had  been  fed  and  nourished  for 
long  periods.  Besides  this  there  were, 
in  all  these  nations,  vast  preparations 
for  war,  billions  of  dollars'  worth  of  arms 
and  implements  of  war  in  readiness  for 
use,  millions  of  men  who  had  been  trained 
in  the  arts  of  war.  What  needs  to  be 
accounted  for  is  this  aggregation  of 
murderous  hate  and  murderous  machin- 
ery. This  is  not  a  mere  impulse  or 
1  Op,  ciL,  p.  435. 


12         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

sentiment,  it  is  a  product.  It  is  an  effect ; 
what  is  the  cause? 

The  universal  belief  of  all  the  nations 
that  all  the  other  nations  are  actual  or 
probable  enemies,  is  the  procuring  cause 
of  the  armaments  by  which  war  is  made, 
and  of  the  wars  in  which  the  armaments 
logically  issue.  This  belief  in  the  uni- 
versal enmity  of  nations  —  how  is  it 
engendered? 

One  theological  answer  is  that  enmity 
is  the  central  principle  of  human  nature ; 
that  it  is  natural  for  men  to  hate  one 
another.  This  was  the  basis  of  the 
philosophy  of  Hobbes  —  that  the  nat- 
ural state  of  man  is  a  state  of  war. 
Not  many  theologians  or  philosophers 
put  their  theory  quite  so  baldly  as  this ; 
most  of  them  shrink  from  saying  that 
God  made  men  to  hate  one  another; 
but  the  assumption  is  general  that  after 
the  fall  of  Adam  the  natural  relation  of 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  13 

human  beings  became  one  of  enmity. 
Among  the  regenerate,  social  and  fraternal 
relations  might  be  looked  for,  but  noth- 
ing of  the  kind  could  be  expected  of  the 
unregenerate ;  among  them  the  only 
logical  relations  must  be  those  of  an- 
tagonism and  strife.  They  are  naturally 
"opposed  to  all  good,"  and  the  central 
good  of  life  is  agreement  and  unity.  Of 
course,  then,  they  would  be  opposed 
to  that  on  principle. 

Not  only  so,  "mankind  by  the  fall 
lost  communion  with  God  and  are  under 
his  wrath  and  curse."  It  would  seem 
to  be  logical  on  this  ground  for  the  re- 
generate and  the  unregenerate  to  hate 
each  other.  The  unregenerate  are  the 
enemies  of  God ;  can  the  friends  of  God 
be  expected  to  be  the  friends  of  his 
enemies?  It  is  true  that  it  has  never 
been  possible  to  work  out  this  theory; 
regenerate   parents   have   not   generally 


14         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

been  able  to  follow  their  logic  and  hate 
their  unregenerate  children,  and  there 
have  been  many  beautiful  friendships 
among  kindred  and  comrades  and  neigh- 
bors where  a  stringent  orthodoxy  would 
have  forbidden  all  such  relations.  Hu- 
man nature  will  sometimes  revolt  against 
the  most  rigid  theories;  it  refuses  to 
be  as  inhuman  as  theology  requires  it 
to  be.  No  doubt  it  thus  furnishes  addi- 
tional proof  of  its  own  depravity. 

While  the  theological  theory  of  the 
natural  enmity  of  human  beings  has 
sometimes  been  hard  to  believe,  the 
theory  of  their  natural  selfishness  has 
been  readily  accepted.  That  every  hu- 
man being  will  make  his  own  interest 
central  and  supreme,  and  will  seek  it  at 
the  expense  of  the  interests  of  his  fellows, 
is  generally  accepted  and  approved  as 
the  natural  law  of  human  conduct. 
This  is  not  regarded  as  the  result  of  the 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  15 

fall;  it  is  supposed  to  be  the  normal 
action  of  the  average  man.  God  did 
not  make  men  to  hate  one  another, 
but  he  made  them  to  look  out,  each  for 
himself,  and  to  keep  the  interests  of 
others  always  subordinate  to  his  own. 
''The  great  Author  of  Nature,"  said 
Malthus,  Christian  minister  and  polit- 
ical economist,  "with  that  wisdom 
which  is  apparent  in  all  his  works,"  has 
made  "the  passion  of  self-love  beyond 
comparison  stronger  than  the  passion  of 
benevolence."  And  he  proceeds  to  ex- 
plain why  it  is  that  by  pushing  our  own 
interests  with  no  concern  for  the  inter- 
ests of  others,  we  most  surely  promote 
the  universal  welfare. 

This  is  the  philosophy  which  has  ruled 
our  civilization  hitherto.  The  centrality 
and  supremacy  of  the  individual  has 
been  the  keynote  of  our  political  economy 
and  our  politics,  until  a  very  recent  day. 


16         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

Not  less  thoroughly  has  it  dominated 
our  reUgion,  putting  the  stress  of  its 
hortation  on  the  primary  obHgation  of 
looking  out  for  ourselves.  All  this  was 
a  grievous  mutilation  of  the  Christian 
morality,  but  it  fell  in  with  the  prevail- 
ing theology  and  was  supposed  to  reflect 
the  Darwinian  doctrine  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest;  and  thus  it  held  its  own, 
not  only  in  the  church,  but  in  the  school 
and  in  the  senate  and  in  the  mart.  It 
is  evident  that  from  a  church  nurtured 
in  doctrines  like  these  no  effective  opposi- 
tion to  war  could  be  expected. 

Until  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  this  theory  of  the  centrality 
and  supremacy  of  the  individual  held 
nearly  undisputed  sway  over  the  thought 
of  Christendom.  In  the  last  decades 
of  that  century  its  domination  began  to 
be  questioned.  A  remarkable  increase 
in   the    study   of   the   New   Testament 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  17 

brought  into  clearer  light  the  ethics  of 
the  Christ,  and  made  it  impossible  for 
some  of  us  to  worship  the  infinite  Ego 
who  was  central  in  the  systems  of  indi- 
vidualistic theology.  It  became  evident 
that  he  could  not  be  the  God  and  Father 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  A  revision  of 
Darwinism  also  made  it  plain  that  the 
law  of  the  ape  and  tiger  was  modified 
by  the  advent  of  humanity,  and  that 
Nature,  when  the  facts  were  all  in,  did 
not  warrant  the  individual  in  seeking 
his  own,  in  disregard  of  the  welfare  of 
his  neighbors.  Herbert  Spencer  proved 
from  the  study  of  the  lowest  orders  of 
life  that  altruism  is  not  less  primordial 
than  egoism ;  that  self-sacrifice  is  just  as 
natural  and  just  as  necessary  as  self- 
assertion;  and  Henry  Drummond  and 
Prince  Kropotkin  have  shown  us  how 
the  struggle  for  life  even  among  the 
grasses  and  the  flocks  and  the  herds  is 


18         THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

lifted  up  and  transfigured  in  "  the  strug- 
\  gle  for  the  life  of  others." 

Thus  we  hear  the  first  note  of  a  posi- 
tive reaction  against  that  philosophy  of 
individualism  which  has  dominated  West- 
ern civilization  until  a  recent  day.  It 
has  gained  enough  control  of  the  world's 
thought  to  make  itself  audible  in  the 
outcry  against  war  which  was  heard 
at  the  outbreak  of  this  infernal  conflict; 
but  it  has  yet  by  no  means  become  the 
ruling  idea  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
direct  the  policy  of  the  nations.  Nor 
is  the  popular  mind  of  Christendom  by 
any  means  purged  of  these  notions. 
The  mind  of  the  multitude,  even  of 
those  supposed  to  be  educated,  is  not 
at  all  clear  upon  the  fundamental  laws 
of  life.  You'  will  hear  thousands  of  in- 
telligent men  contending  in  the  streets 
today  that  the  old  law  of  eat  and  be 
eaten  is  regnant  in  human  society  and 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  19 

must  always  be;  that  the  big  fish  have 
always  devoured  the  little  ones  and 
always  will;  that  it  is  only  silly  senti- 
mentalists who  blink  at  these  hard 
facts.  It  is  not  Bernhardi  or  Treitschke 
alone  who  propagate  the  gospel  of 
force;  there  are  plenty  of  Americans 
who  profess  their  faith  in  it,  most  of 
whom,  thank  God,  would  be  ashamed 
of  living  up  to  it.  Social  theories,  like 
the  tails  of  snakes,  often  keep  on  wiggling 
long  after  life  has  gone  out  of  them.  But 
there  is  still  enough  of  vitality  in  these 
individualistic  theories  to  muddle  the 
heads  of  millions.  The  outstanding  fact 
is  that  there  has  been  no  clear  and  co- 
herent teaching  respecting  the  founda- 
tions of  the  social  order  by  the  Christian 
church;  the  law  of  love  has  been 
preached,  but  for  the  most  part  it  has 
been  regarded  as  having  a  partial  and 
rather    esoteric    application    to    human 


20         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

relations;  it  was  not  supposed  to  be 
a  practical  rule  in  trade  or  business  of 
any  sort;  it  could  not  be  followed  in 
politics;  it  was  a  counsel  of  perfection 
rather  than  a  rule  of  conduct. 

Thus  the  kind  of  morality  for  which 
the  Christian  church  has  stood  sponsor 
has  been  a  very  equivocal  rule;  it 
could  not  furnish  any  adequate  guidance 
for  human  society.  Not  many  of  those 
who  profess  and  call  themselves  Chris- 
tians have  any  consistent  theory  of 
human  conduct.  Handling  ordinary  so- 
cial relations  so  timidly  and  with  such 
vacillation,  how  could  it  be  expected 
to  deal  efficiently  with  international 
relations?  If  it  cannot  make  its  influ- 
ence felt  in  the  suppression  of  strikes, 
in  the  exploitation  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong,  in  the  growth  of  monopoly  in 
democratic  society,  what  reason  have  we 
to  expect  that  it  would  make  an  effectual 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  21 

protest  against  war?  The  fact  which 
this  war  has  brought  most  strongly  to 
light  has  been  the  inadequacy  of  the 
moral  leadership  of  the  Christian  church, 
which  is  due  to  the  feebleness  of  its 
grasp  upon  the  fundamental  laws  of 
life.  This  is  the  fact  which  the  preced- 
ing sketch  of  the  relation  of  the  Chris- 
tian church  to  the  moral  development 
of  society  most  strikingly  reveals.  The 
business  of  the  church  is  to  teach  men 
how  to  live.  The  present  condition  of 
the  world  both  within  and  among  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth  is  evidence  that  this 
business  has  been  but  indifferently  done. 
Would  it  not  be  well  for  those  who  are 
called  to  the  leadership  of  the  churches 
to  consider  carefully,  at  this  juncture, 
some  of  the  simpler  elements  of  the  social 
order,  to  which,  hitherto,  they  have 
given  but  indifferent  attention.  Such 
a  study  will  show  us  what  the  church 


22         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

could  do,  what  it  has  done  and  what  it 
has  failed  to  do,  and  it  will  bring  us 
near  to  the  sources  of  that  enmity 
of  nations  which  is  the  root  of  all 
our  wars. 


Ill 

THE  ORGANIC  LAW  OF  HUMAN 
SOCIETY 

HUMAN  beings  are  made  to  live 
together  upon  this  planet  and  to 
find  in  mutual  co-operation  a  large  part 
of  the  good  of  being.  The  law  of  life 
is  therefore  love  or  good  will.  They  are 
sharers  in  one  another's  welfare;  each 
one  is  largely  dependent  for  his  happi- 
ness on  the  well  being  and  well  doing  of 
his  fellows. 

This  is  the  organic  law  of  human 
society,  which  it  is  the  main  function 
of  the  church  to  understand  and  apply; 
it  is  as  truly  a  natural  law  as  gravitation 
or  chemical  affinity ;  it  is  not  dependent 
on  any  positive  enactment,  human  or 

23 


24         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

divine;  men  are  so  made  that  if  they 
recognize  this  principle  of  soUdarity  and 
conform  to  it  in  their  conduct  they  have 
health  and  prosperity  and  peace. 

This  is  known  as  Christ's  law.  It  is 
his  because  he  gave  it  form  and  currency ; 
his  disciples  gratefully  and  reverently 
connect  his  name  with  it;  but  all  in- 
telligent Christians  know  that  he  simply 
formulated  the  principle  which  was  im- 
pressed upon  human  nature  by  the 
Author  of  our  being.  Jesus  declared  it 
and  incarnated  it;  but  it  has  been  the 
law  of  human  conduct  ever  since  hu- 
manity existed  upon  this  earth,  and  it 
always  will  be,  in  every  world  inhabited 
by  men.  But  this  law  is  constantly 
violated  by  those  who  insist  on  dis- 
criminating their  own  interest  from  and 
exalting  it  above  that  of  the  community, 
on  preferring  their  individual  good  to 
the  common  good,  and  on  using  their 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         ^5 

fellows,  as  far  as  they  can,  as  means  to 
their  own  ends. 

The  natural  and  inevitable  consequence 
of  this  violation  of  the  natural  law  of 
life  is  the  cultivation  of  the  spirit  of 
ill  will,  in  those  who  practice  it  and  in 
those  who  are  the  victims  of  it.  "  What- 
soever a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also 
reap."  To  sow  ill  will  is  to  reap  ill 
will,  thirty,  sixty,  an  hundred  fold;  for 
this  is  seed  which  rarely  fails  to  catch. 
Every  man  who  seeks  his  own  interest 
at  the  expense  of  his  neighbors  naturally 
becomes  their  enemy  and  makes  them 
his  enemies.  Unless  his  egotism  is  well 
concealed  they  soon  learn  to  hate  him. 
Out  of  this  sowing  spring  the  animosities 
and  the  hostilities  which  infest  our  social 
life,  and  often  break  out  in  destructive 
conflicts.  These  social  disturbances  are 
apt  to  be  considered  merely  as  causes 
of  social  loss  or  injury.    We  shall  never 


26         THE   FORKS   OF  THE  ROAD 

make  much  headway  in  dealing  with 
them  until  we  have  learned  to  regard 
them  as  consequences,  as  penal  conse- 
quences, of  violated  law.  Every  strike 
is  a  retribution  inflicted  upon  the  com- 
munity for  its  sin.  It  is  the  direct 
and  inevitable  result  of  the  violation  of 
the  law  of  good  will.  It  is  evidence 
that  groups  of  men  have  been  seeking 
their  own  interests  at  the  expense  of 
their  neighbors.  When  large  groups  com- 
bine in  such  struggles  the  consequences 
are  apt  to  be  serious.  But  these  conse- 
quences are  simply  retributive  —  they 
are  the  natural  results  of  disobedience 
of  the  law  of  life.  When  men  refuse  to 
obey  the  law  of  life  they  must  suffer 
the  penalty.  And  no  penalties  are  more 
swiftly  paid  than  those  by  which  the 
law  of  good  will  is  armed.  It  brings 
not  only  immediate  and  serious  injury 
to   the   individual   transgressor,    but   it 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  27 

introduces  into  society  inflammations 
and  conflagrations  of  the  most  destruc- 
tive sort. 

There  are  few  practical  questions 
which  are  so  Uttle  understood  by  the 
people  of  the  churches,  and  by  those 
outside  the  churches,  as  this  matter  of 
the  primary  law  of  human  conduct. 
There  has  been  no  lack  of  preaching 
of  law  and  penalty  in  orthodox  pulpits, 
but  it  has  been  largely  the  darkening 
of  counsel  by  words  without  knowledge. 
The  law,  as  it  has  been  preached,  was 
simply  the  requirement  of  moral  per- 
fection, and  the  effort  of  the  preacher 
has  been  to  prove  that  such  a  law  could 
never  be  obeyed  and  that  the  penalty 
of  the  law  was  eternal  punishment. 
The  one  great  business  of  men  in  this 
world  as  the  pulpit  has  enforced  it,  is 
to  escape  from  this  threatened  penalty 
by   accepting   the    substitute    provided. 


28         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

When  they  have  done  that,  their  anxieties 
about  law  and  penalty  are  at  an  end. 

As  for  the  law  of  love,  it  is,  of  course, 
regarded  as  the  idealization  of  the  moral 
law  which  men  are  required  to  obey; 
but,  for  practical  purposes,  it  is  consid- 
ered as  a  bit  of  mild  counsel,  with  no 
assignable  sanction;  of  course  we  all 
break  it  every  day  and  always  shall, 
but  the  penalty  of  such  disobedience  is 
simply  eternal  punishment;  and  if  we 
have  secured  ourselves  against  that  by 
the  substitutionary  arrangement  referred 
to,  all  is  well  with  us,  and  if  we  have  not, 
it  is  not  inflicted  until  after  death,  and 
there  will  be  abundant  time  to  avert  it 
by  prudently  repenting.  In  fact,  how- 
ever, nobody  seems  to  believe  much  in 
hell  in  these  days;  the  orthodox  minis- 
ters are  always  joking  about  it;  and  it 
is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  good  God 
would  consign  to  everlasting  and  reme- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         29 

diless  suffering  his  own  creatures.  And 
since  this  is  the  only  kind  of  penalty 
they  know  anything  about,  the  multi- 
tude see  no  reason  why  they  should 
greatly  trouble  themselves  about  it. 
In  fact  (so  they  often  argue)  we  are  con- 
stantly told  that  Christianity  is  a  reli- 
gion of  love,  and  if  this  is  so  all  violation 
of  its  law  will  be  leniently  dealt  with. 
If  the  Christian  law  is  the  law  of  love 
how  can  there  be  any  penalty? 

Such  is  the  mental  muddle  in  which 
the  current  orthodox  teaching  is  apt  to 
leave  the  minds  of  those  who  listen  to 
it.  Of  the  real  nature  of  the  law  of 
love  as  the  law  of  life,  of  the  ways  that 
it  has  of  enforcing  itself,  of  the  deadly 
reactions  of  disobedience  to  it  in  the 
soul  and  in  society,  how  dim  are  the 
conceptions  of  the  multitude!  What 
shall  be  said  of  the  teachers  of  morality 
who  permit  the  generations  to  grow  up 


30         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

under  the  delusion  that  the  law  of  good 
will  is  only  a  sentimental  counsel  of  per- 
fection or  pious  advice,  and  that  infrac- 
tions of  it  are  punished,  if  at  all,  in  some 
remote  and  semiconjectural  futurity? 
How  can  they  conceal  from  the  sight  of 
men  the  terrible  facts  which  are  daily 
transpiring  before  all  who  have  eyes  to 
see? 

We  often  hear  orthodox  teachers  sneer- 
ing at  the  law  of  love  as  a  mere  senti- 
mentality—  "gelatinous"  is  the  term 
by  which  they  are  apt  to  characterize 
it.  It  is  sentimental  in  just  the  same 
sense  that  the  laws  of  hydrostatics  or 
electro-dynamics  are  sentimental;  it  is 
derived  from  a  book  in  the  same  way 
that  the  law  of  gravitation  is  derived 
from  a  book ;  it  is  an  induction  from  the 
facts  of  life;  and  its  sanctions  no  more 
depend  on  any  positive  injunction  than 
do  the  sanctions  of  the  law  of  dietetics. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         31 

If  you  eat  poisonous  or  indigestible 
food,  the  retribution  is  not  deferred  until 
after  death  and  the  judgment,  nor  is 
there  any  scheme  of  substitution  by  which 
you  may  evade  the  penalty;  it  follows 
the  transgression  instantly  and  inevi- 
tably. Not  less  swift  and  certain  are 
the  consequences  of  every  violation  of 
the  moral  law.  The  reaction  of  the 
evil  deed  upon  the  mind,  the  heart,  the 
will  of  the  evil  doer  is  utterly  inescapable. 
Transgressions  of  the  law  of  love  register 
themselves  instantly  in  the  character 
of  the  transgressor.  They  darken  his 
judgment;  they  inflame  his  passions, 
they  mar  his  relations  with  those  from 
whom  he  has  withholden  the  good  will 
which  is  their  due.  We  hate  those 
whom  we  have  injured,  so  long  as  the 
injury  is  unrepented  of  and  unforgiven. 
We  cannot  help  it,  we  are  made  that 
way.     Not  only  is  every  selfish  act  a 


32  THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

manifestation  of  an  unsocial  nature,  it 
tends  to  make  the  man  who  does  it  more 
unsocial.  Selfishness  breeds  hate,  and 
hate,  as  Jesus  has  told  us,  is  incipient 
murder.  Such  is  the  penalty  of  the 
law  of  love  in  its  reaction  upon  the 
individual.  Upon  society  its  effects  are 
no  less  deleterious.  Every  violation  of 
the  law  of  love  sets  up  irritations,  resent- 
ments, suspicions,  jealousies,  which  dis- 
turb all  human  relationships,  which 
tend  to  break  out  in  quarrels  and  colli- 
sions of  will,  and  to  make  helpful  human 
relationships  difficult  or  impossible.  The 
enmities  and  fightings  which  keep  hu- 
man society  in  turmoil  are  thus  perfectly 
explicable;  there  is  nothing  occult  or 
mysterious  about  them;  if  they  should 
cease  we  should  know  exactly  how  to  go 
to  work  to  reproduce  them ;  if  we  should 
conclude  that  they  are  undesirable  we 
know  how  to  get  rid  of  them. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         33 

About  all  this  how  much  do  the  people 
know  who  are  led  into  the  churches  by 
the  current  popular  evangelism?  Not 
so  much  as  they  ought  to  know.  Some 
of  them  have  gained  an  inkling  of  it;  to 
not  a  few  among  them  these  deeper 
and  larger  meanings  of  life  have  been 
revealed;  but  by  most  of  those  who 
magnify  and  extol  what  they  call  "the 
good  old  gospel/'  truths  of  this  nature 
are  but  dimly  apprehended.  What  the 
real  forces  are  which  are  shaping  their 
own  lives  and  the  life  of  the  society  in 
which  they  live,  they  very  imperfectly 
understand.  And  they  do  not  see  that  be- 
cause of  their  failure  to  understand  these 
things,  they  are  cherishing  influences  and 
habits  of  thought  and  speech  and  action 
which  can  only  result  in  filling  the  earth 
with  bitterness  and  strife  and  contention. 
That  they  understand  them  so  imperfectly 
is  mainly  the  fault  of  Christian  teachers. 


IV 
THE  BLESSING  AND  THE  CURSE 

TO  a  considerable  extent  modern 
civilized  society  has  got  rid  of 
enmity  and  conflict.  Life  is  not  all 
strife  and  contention;  in  the  lives  of 
most  of  us  there  are  many  serene  and 
restful  days ;  we  prosecute  our  callings 
in  a  fair  measure  of  peace  and  find  our- 
selves gladly  co-operating  in  many  use- 
ful and  harmonious  ways  with  our  fellow 
men.  Within  the  boundaries  of  the 
great  nations  these  relations  of  amity 
between  individuals  have  been  gradually 
strengthening;  the  fact  of  our  interde- 
pendence has  been  forcing  itself  upon 
our  thought;  the  sense  of  solidarity 
has  been  deepening;  in  constantly  en- 
34 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         35 

larging  groups  we  have  been  learning  the 
value  of  co-operation. 

That  this  is  due  in  considerable  part 
to  the  influence  of  Christianity  can 
hardly  be  gainsaid ;  in  spite  of  its  utterly 
defective  administration,  the  teaching 
and  spirit  of  its  Founder  have  to  so  great 
an  extent  leavened  society  that  egoistic 
conduct  has  been  measurably  discredited, 
and  many  have  learned  to  praise  and  not 
a  few  to  practice  the  principle  of  good  will. 

Doubtless,  also,  the  lesson  of  experience 
has  been  learned  by  many  with  whom 
the  precepts  of  Christianity  have  had 
little  weight;  for  wherever  the  law  of 
love  has  been  given  a  fair  trial  it  has 
demonstrated  its  practicality.  Thou- 
sands of  traders  have  found,  by  actual 
trial,  that  it  is  more  profitable  for  them 
to  work  together  than  to  make  war  on 
one  another,  and  the  merchants  and 
manufacturers   in   nearly  every   line   of 


36         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

business  have  formed  associations,  and 
are  meeting,  constantly,  to  consult  about 
their  mutual  interests.  The  change  in 
this  respect  which  has  taken  place  within 
the  last  twenty-five  years  is  significant. 
The  great  consolidations  which  have 
appeared  in  industry  are  also  due  in 
part  to  the  same  discovery.  And  the 
unions  and  federations  of  labor  are 
witnesses  to  the  truth  that  the  good  of 
life  is  found  not  in  isolation,  but  in 
co-operation. 

The  recognition  of  the  regnancy  of 
this  truth  is,  however,  still  very  partial. 
Many  who  profess  to  believe  it  have 
never  fully  grasped  it,  and  there  are 
multitudes  as  we  have  seen  who  frankly 
and  even  scornfully  repel  it,  denying  the 
possibility  of  making  good  will  the  su- 
preme motive  of  conduct;  affirming 
the  centrality  of  the  egotistic  motive 
and  basing  upon  it  their  entire  philos- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE   ROAD  37 

ophy  of  conduct.  The  impossibility  and 
even  the  absurdity  of  disinterestedness, 
the  certainty  that  every  man  will  make 
his  own  interest  the  ruling  motive  of  all 
his  choices  is  the  professed  creed  of  a  mul- 
titude. The  man  in  the  street  affirms  it 
somewhat  less  confidently  than  once  he 
did,  but  he  keeps  affirming  it. 

Such  a  philosophy  has  been  en- 
couraged by  much  of  our  popular  reli- 
gion which  has  presented  God  as  the 
infinite  Egoist,  doing  everything  for  his 
own  glory,  and  has  made  its  strongest 
appeal  to  the  self-interest  of  men.  It 
can  hardly  be  a  matter  of  wonder  then 
that  the  central  law  of  conduct  has  been 
so  feebly  grasped  by  the  great  majority 
of  men ;  and  that  there  are  so  many  who, 
though  accepting  it  in  some  of  their 
human  relations,  contemptuously  reject 
it  in  others ;  —  business  men,  for  ex- 
ample, who  have  come  to  believe  rather 


38         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

enthusiastically  that  good  will  and  co- 
operation are  most  valuable  in  their 
relation  with  other  business  men,  but 
regard  them  as  quite  out  of  the  question 
in  their  relations  with  their  employees; 
and  wage-workers  who  have  discovered 
that  it  is  a  good  thing  to  be  friends  with 
other  wage-workers,  but  who  cannot 
regard  those  who  pay  them  their  wages 
in  any  other  light  than  that  of  enemies. 
So  it  comes  about  that  while  good  will 
to  some  extent  controls  the  relations 
of  many  individuals,  it  is  often  entirely 
ruled  out  of  the  relations  of  classes. 
Our  bitterest  and  most  destructive  social 
conflicts  arise  from  this  source;  they 
are  the  penalties  inflicted  upon  society 
for  its  failure  to  apply  the  principle  of 
good  will  to  all  human  relations. 

Thus  it  appears  that  human  society  is 
yet  but  imperfectly  organized;  a  large 
share  of  the  individual  wills  of  which  it 


THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  39 

is  composed  yield  an  imperfect  obedi- 
ence to  its  organic  law;  many  groups 
are  in  concerted  rebellion  against  it. 
There  is  enough  respect  for  it  and  volun- 
tary obedience  to  it  to  keep  society  from 
chaos,  and  to  produce  large  and  precious 
results  of  social  welfare;  but  there  is 
also  enough  of  disobedience  to  it  to  fill 
the  best  society  which  we  have  yet  seen 
with  strife  and  confusion.  Wherever 
it  is  obeyed  it  brings  peace  and  welfare 
and  happiness ;  wherever  it  is  disobeyed 
it  brings  disturbance  and  conflict  and  fear. 
Thus  "the  Power,  not  ourselves,  that 
makes  for  righteousness"  is  seeking  to 
educate  mankind  into  the  obedience  of 
the  law  of  life.  What  an  old  prophet 
reported  Him  as  saying  a  good  many 
years  ago,  he  has  been  saying  to  every 
generation  in  the  reactions  of  the  laws 
which  are  impressed  on  human  nature : 
"Behold  I  have  set  before  you  life  and 


40         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

death,  blessing  and  cursing;  therefore, 
choose  Hfe."  But  Hfe  must  be  chosen; 
it  is  a  good  that  cannot  be  ours  unless 
we  choose  it,  and  therefore  the  education 
of  mankind  proceeds  slowly.  The  good 
can  well  afford  to  wait.  "He  that  in- 
habiteth  eternity"  is  never  in  a  hurry. 
It  goes  slowly,  but  it  goes.  The  reign  of 
good  will  is  wider  and  stronger  far  than 
it  was  one  thousand  years  ago,  or  even 
one  hundred  years  ago.  Many  of  us 
have  rejoiced  to  see  its  empire  broaden- 
ing and  deepening  within  the  nations 
even  in  our  own  day. 

Within  the  nations  its  great  conquests 
have  been  won  in  the  social  life  and  the 
political  life  of  the  great  nations.  It 
has  abolished  slavery.  It  has  lowered 
the  barriers  of  caste.  It  has  led  in 
democracy.  It  has  lightened  the  bur- 
dens of  the  poor  and  opened  to  them 
the  door  of  opportunity.     It  has  given 


THE  FORKS   OF  THE  ROAD         41 

honor  to  women,  and  is  now  proceeding 
to  clothe  her  with  poHtical  power.  It 
has  widened  the  range  of  human  sym- 
pathy and  deepened  the  springs  of  pity. 
All  this  has  been  done  for  the  hmnaniza- 
tion  of  the  relations  of  men  within  the 
nations.  Even  from  such  partial  ac- 
ceptance as  has  been  given  to  the  law  of 
good  will  by  the  individuals  and  the 
groups  which  make  up  the  life  of  the 
several  nations,  such  benefits  as  these 
have  resulted. 

Between  the  peoples,  also,  of  the 
several  nations,  many  bonds  of  amity, 
many  co-operative  relations  have  been 
established.  Commerce  has  been  weav- 
ing the  ties  of  mutual  service;  travel 
and  migration  have  been  promoting  ac- 
quaintance and  friendship.  We  have 
even  been  hoping  for  a  world  common- 
wealth in  which  we  might  all  be  fellow 
citizens. 


THE  KINGDOMS  OF  ANTICHRIST 

THE  new  elements  which  have 
entered  into  human  thought 
during  the  last  half  century  are  cer- 
tainly significant.  Such  revisions  of  the 
old  theology  as  have  found  acceptance 
in  the  churches,  with  the  corrections 
which  the  later  thinking  has  compelled, 
of  the  first  crude  inferences  of  Darwin- 
ism have  resulted  in  those  humanizing 
influences  which  are  reviewed  in  the 
last  chapter.  These  meliorating  tenden- 
cies have  by  no  means  worked  them- 
selves out  into  the  popular  belief;  it 
takes  time  to  knead  the  leaven  of 
rational  good  will  into  the  lump  of  the 
popular  intelligence ;  but  there  are  signs 

42 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         43 

that  the  old  individualism  which  so  long 
dominated  human  thought  and  ruled  the 
current  theology  is  yielding  to  a  larger 
view  in  which  the  individual,  instead  of 
discriminating  his  interest  from  that  of 
the  community  and  seeking  first  his  own 
salvation,  shall  identify  himself  with  the 
community,  and  seek  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  his  righteousness,  finding 
himself,  and  securing  his  own  welfare, 
not  by  struggle  against  his  fellows,  but 
by  co-operation  with  them.  This,  un- 
deniably, is  the  heart  of  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ ;  and  if  the  Christian  church 
had  been  loyal  to  it,  in  its  simplicity,  strife 
and  warfare  would  have  disappeared 
from  the  earth  long  ago.  How  much 
has  been  accomplished  even  by  such 
qualified  and  apologetic  credence  as  the 
Christian  church  has  given  to  it  we  have 
seen  in  the  last  chapter.  It  would  seem 
that  with  such  fruits  in  sight  the  Chris- 


44         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

tian  church  might  have  been  emboldened 
to  accept  the  teachings  of  its  Founder 
and  commit  itself  unreservedly  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom.  This  it  has 
never  yet  done,  and  accordingly  we  find 
intrenched  in  Christian  society  and 
tolerated  if  not  cherished  by  the  Chris- 
tian church,  strong  influences  and  in- 
stitutions which  are  distinctly  and  de- 
fiantly anti-Christian. 

Industry,  politics  and  war  are  all  out- 
side the  pale  of  Christian  ethics;  the 
principles  which  rule  in  them  are  in 
direct  and  flagrant  opposition  to  the 
principles  laid  down  by  Jesus  Christ  as 
fundamental  for  human  society.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  for  which  we  daily 
pray  can  never  come  until  these  institu- 
tions are  revolutionized;  that  is  to  say, 
the  Kingdom  could  not  come  without 
destroying  or  undermining  the  founda- 
tions on  which  they  rest. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         45 

Let  us  consider  what  this  means.  I 
have  said  that  industry  as  at  present 
organized,  is  on  an  anti-Christian  basis. 
Trade,  as  we  have  seen,  has  felt  the 
influence  of  Christian  ideas,  and  shows 
signs  of  responding  to  them.  Mer- 
chandising no  longer  wishes  to  associate 
itself  with  piracy  or  plunder.  The  idea 
prevails  that  trade  may  be  of  mutual 
advantage  both  to  buyers  and  to  sellers. 
Not  only  so,  the  merchants  themselves 
are  learning  to  co-operate;  friendly  as- 
sociations among  them  are  multiplying; 
it  is  beginning  to  be  evident  that  the 
good  of  life  may  be  shared  among  them. 
No  doubt  there  is  still  in  this  realm 
sufiicient  selfishness,  but  the  fact  is 
that  the  spirit  of  good  will  has  a  far 
larger  recognition  among  traders  than 
it  had  twenty-five  years  ago. 

Respecting  the  organization  of  industry 
so  much  cannot  be  said.    The  industrial 


46         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

world  is  divided  into  two  distinct  classes, 
and  the  relations  between  these  are  not 
friendly  but  antagonistic.  Despite  all 
the  arguments  by  which  economists  have 
sought  to  prove  that  the  interests  of 
employers  and  employees  are  identical, 
the  practical  fact  is  that  as  classes  they 
are  arrayed  against  each  other  and  are 
seeking  to  gain  their  ends,  not  by  co- 
operation, but  by  strife.  There  are 
employers  who  wish  to  promote  the  in- 
terests of  their  workmen,  and  there  are 
employees  who  cherish  kindly  feeling 
toward  their  employers,  but  individuals 
of  both  these  classes  who  cultivate  such 
pacific  sentiments  are  apt  to  be  under 
the  suspicion  of  their  associates ;  to  be  a 
friend  of  *^  capital,"  or  to  treat  it  with  con- 
sideration, is  to  be  regarded  by  "labor" 
as  an  enemy,  and  vice  versa.  The  rela- 
tions between  employers  and  employees 
are  maintained  by  a  series  of  struggles, 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         47 

very  destructive  of  life  and  health  and 
happiness,  in  which  each  side  seeks,  by 
inflicting  suffering  and  loss  upon  the 
other,  to  gain  the  advantage.  The 
agreements  on  which  such  struggles  are 
brought  to  an  end  are  generally  regarded 
as  truces;  the  conditions  presuppose 
the  renewal  of  the  conflict  at  no  distant 
day.  The  last  phase  of  this  warfare  is 
the  proposal  of  the  laboring  class  to 
exterminate  the  employing  class,  and 
by  force  or  economic  pressure  to  take 
into  their  own  hands  all  the  instruments 
of  production.  Clearly  this  is  war;  it 
is  a  direct  repudiation  of  the  law  of  life ; 
it  is  a  distinct  refusal  to  recognize  good 
will  and  mutual  service  as  the  foundations 
of  human  society.  There  are  those,  as 
I  have  said,  who  struggle  against  these 
forces  which  make  for  antagonism  and 
strife  in  industrial  society  and  who  seek 
to  bring  in  a  better  day,  but  the  prevail- 


48         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

ing  tendencies  are  still  unsocial  and  anti- 
Christian. 

Of  party  politics  the  same  thing  must 
be  said.  Party  politics  is,  confessedly, 
warfare.  Parties  are  not  organized  to 
co-operate  with  each  other,  but  to 
defeat  and  thwart  and  cripple  each  other. 
Each  gains  its  end  by  disparaging  and 
hindering  the  work  of  the  other.  Any 
measure  proposed  by  one  party  will  be 
likely  to  be  criticized,  in  no  sympathetic 
temper,  by  its  adversaries.  Any  man 
nominated  for  office  by  either  party  may 
expect  to  have  his  misdeeds  and  defi- 
ciencies mercilessly  brought  to  light  by 
his  rivals.  There  is  much  less  of  this 
now  than  once  there  was ;  but  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  ape  and  tiger  period  in  politics 
still  linger,  and  any  one  who  lives  in  a 
region  where  politicians  are  active  be- 
comes painfully  aware  of  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  large  realm  of  human  activity 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         49 

in  which  the  law  of  good  will  is  flouted 
as  utterly  impractical.  These  antago- 
nisms of  politics  are  not  always  deadly; 
the  wrath  which  they  invoke  is  often 
more  humorous  than  terrifying,  and  is 
rehearsed  derisively  the  day  after  elec- 
tion; but  they  are,  nevertheless,  suffi- 
cient to  keep  alive  many  a  root  of  bitter- 
ness and  to  prevent  or  hinder  the  friendly 
co-operations  in  which  neighbors  might 
unite  for  the  common  good.  The  spirit 
which  animates  party  politics  gener- 
ally, with  the  slander  and  detraction 
"which  do  either  accompany  or  flow 
therefrom,''  is  as  far  from  Christian- 
ity as  the  East  is  from  the  West;  and 
it  furnishes  another  instance  of  the  fail- 
ure of  the  church  to  enforce  its  message 
in  the  great  realms  of  human  activity. 
Of  all  the  kingdoms  of  anti-Christ, 
however,  the  most  powerful  is  the  realm 
of  international  relationships.     Here  the 


50         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

principle  of  good  will  has  found  but 
scant  recognition.  Between  nations  no 
such  obligation  has  been  acknowledged, 
or  if  in  any  sense  it  was  admitted,  it 
was  at  once  distinctly  consigned  to  a 
subordinate  function.  Reciprocity  be- 
tween states  has  not  been  provided  for 
by  the  laws  and  usages  of  nations;  it 
was  distinctly  a  new  note  when  John 
Hay,  in  his  negotiations  with  China, 
declared  that  the  United  States  in- 
tended to  govern  itself,  in  its  dealings 
with  other  nations,  by  the  Golden  Rule. 
That  each  state  will  make  its  own  in- 
terest paramount  is  the  nearly  uniform 
assumption.  That  a  nation  should 
love  its  neighbor  nation  as  itself,  would 
be  regarded  by  the  average  diplomat 
as  an  extremely  sentimental  proposition. 
Each  nation  must,  of  course,  love  it- 
self supremely ;  international  relations 
are   founded,   ultimately,   on 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         51 

"The  good  old  rule,  the  simple  plan, 
That  he  should  get  who  has  the  power. 
And  he  should  keep  who  can." 

Good  will  may  be  permitted  to  play 
some  subordinate  part  in  national  inter- 
course, but  the  fundamental  assumption 
of  every  nation  is  that  every  other 
nation  is  a  probable  enemy.  Every 
armament  is  the  advertisement  —  the 
proclamation  by  the  nation  —  of  its 
lack  of  faith  in  the  existence  of  good 
will  on  the  part  of  its  neighbors;  of 
its  unwillingness  to  trust  in  the  law  of 
love  as  the  basis  of  national  relation- 
ships. Every  fort,  every  battleship, 
every  regular  army  regiment,  every 
militia  organization,  is  a  confession  of 
the  national  faith  in  force  rather  than  in 
good  will. 

If  it  is  not  a  declaration  of  its  own 
purpose  to  invade  and  overpower  weaker 


52         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

peoples  it  is  an  accusation  against  other 
nations,  —  a  confession  of  its  suspicion 
that  some  or  all  of  them  are  likely  to 
invade  and  plunder  it,  unless  it  is  armed 
against  them. 

Such  is  the  state  of  mind  in  which  we 
find  the  leading  nations  of  the  earth, 
the  nations  which  call  themselves  Chris- 
tian. It  is  a  state  of  mind  with  which 
all  intelligent  Christians  should  make 
themselves  familiar,  and  should  endeavor 
to  understand  and  explain.  This  state 
of  mind  is  the  one  important  fact  with 
which  the  world,  at  this  crisis,  has  to 
deal.  It  is  the  spirit  of  militarism  which 
is  now  before  the  world's  judgment 
seat,  and  the  Christian  church  is  deeply 
concerned  in  this  inquiry,  because  the 
spirit  of  militarism  has  entered  into  and 
taken  possession  of  what  we  call  Chris- 
tian civilization.  For  the  health  and 
sanity  of  the  ideas  which  control  Chris- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  53 

tian  civilization,  the  Christian  church  is 
responsible.  What  then  is  this  spirit 
of  militarism  to  which  we  owe  the  pres- 
ent condition  of  the  world? 

On  the  threshold  of  this  inquiry,  ques- 
tions will  be  raised  as  to  the  rightfulness 
of  defensive  wars.  It  is  assumed  that 
national  self-defense  is  justifiable  and 
it  seems  to  be  easy  to  prove  that  all 
war  is  defensive.  That  claim  is  con- 
fidently set  up  by  all  the  combatants  in 
the  present  war.  When  all  other  sub- 
terfuges fail  the  "preventiv  Krieg"  is 
a  convenient  contrivance  for  cushioning 
the  national  conscience.  If  you  can 
only  convince  yourself  that  an  enemy  is 
getting  ready  to  strike  you,  it  is  only 
self-defense  to  strike  first.  Such  devices 
are  amply  furnished  by  the  philosophers 
of  militarism. 

Seriously,  however,  the  rights  of  self- 
defense  are  not  to  be  questioned,  and  the 


54         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

duty  of  using  force  to  prevent  injustice 
may  sometimes  be  imperative.  An  inno- 
cent nation  may  sometimes  be  dragged 
into  war.  That  the  Belgians  were  con- 
strained to  resist  the  invasion  of  their 
territory  is  no  sure  proof  that  they  had 
not  been  cultivating  the  sentiment  of 
brotherhood. 

But  when  the  nations  of  the  earth  are 
visibly  engaged  year  after  year  in  build- 
ing forts  and  forging  cannon,  and  launch- 
ing fleet  after  fleet  of  battleships,  each 
bigger  and  deadlier  than  all  which  have 
gone  before,  and  inventing  more  and 
more  hellish  implements  of  destruction, 
—  some  of  them  forcing  their  young  men 
to  give  years  of  their  lives  to  study  of 
the  art  of  killing,  it  seems  well-nigh 
certain  that  they  do  not  hold  themselves 
subject  to  the  laws  of  the  Kingdom  of 
heaven.  Those  nations  of  which  it  can 
be  truly  said  that  this  is  a  large  part  of 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  55 

their  occupation  must  surely  be  in  a 
state  of  mind  out  of  which  war  is  bound 
to  come.  Those  nations  which  are  ex- 
pending the  larger  part  of  their  revenues 
in  preparing  for  war  cannot  be  in  a 
Christian  state  of  mind.  Say  what  we 
may  about  the  justifiability  of  defensive 
war,  the  mental  and  moral  condition  of 
the  nations  which  in  times  of  peace  are 
deliberately  getting  ready  to  kill  each 
other,  cannot  be  in  accordance  with 
any  precept  or  principle  of  the  Christian 
religion.  This  preparation  cannot  pro- 
ceed, as  it  has  been  proceeding  during 
the  last  half  century  in  all  the  nations 
which  call  themselves  Christian,  with- 
out the  most  flat  repudiation  of  all  that 
is  central  and  vital  in  Christian  morality. 
It  cannot  proceed  except  upon  the  as- 
sumption by  each  nation  that  some  or 
all  of  the  other  nations  are  bent  on 
attacking  and  destroying  a  friendly  and 


56         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

defenseless  nation.  For  itself  each  na- 
tion, of  course,  claims  to  be  free  from  all 
such  predatory  purposes.  Equally  of 
course  it  must  accuse  some  or  all  of  the 
other  nations  of  being  governed  by  such 
predatory  purposes,  else  its  herculean 
labors  of  preparation  for  defensive  war 
would  be  absurd.  For  some  or  all  of 
the  other  nations  which  it  thus  accuses 
it  must  therefore  be  cherishing  fear 
and  suspicion  and  consequent  enmity. 
\  Those  who  are  inciting  this  work  of 
preparation  for  war  must  needs  be 
cultivating  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
such  fears  and  suspicions  toward  some 
nation  or  other  as  alone  could  warrant 
so  heavy  a  drain  upon  its  revenues.  Of 
course,  under  such  conditions,  the  rela- 
tion of  this  nation  toward  the  other 
nations  of  whom  it  entertains  such 
suspicions  must  be  more  and  more 
strained.    No  nation  can  thus  suspect 


THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  57 

another  without  the  other's  knowing  it 
and  resenting  it.  Between  nations  thus 
regarding  each  other,  an  occasion  for 
war  will  easily  be  found. 
N  This  is  the  psychology  of  war.  It 
originates  in  a  state  of  mind.  <<And  the 
state  of  mind  in  which  it  originates  is 
the  antithesis  of  the  Christian  state  of 
mind. 

It  is  evident  that  the  principal  Euro- 
pean nations,  though  nominally  Chris- 
tian, have  been,  during  the  last  genera- 
tion, in  a  highly  unchristian  state  of 
mind.  They  have  not  been  dwelling,  in 
their  thoughts,  upon  the  fact  of  universal 
brotherhood.  They  have  been  thinking 
much  more  upon  national  enmities; 
they  have  not  been  studying  the  things 
that  make  for  peace,  but  the  things  that 
make  for  war.  They  have  been  building 
ships  and  gathering  armaments  and 
drilling  soldiers  and  manufacturing  the 


58         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

machinery  of  destruction.  Most  of  this 
has,  indeed,  been  done  under  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  few  leaders,  but  no  such  prep- 
aration for  war  can  be  carried  forward 
in  any  nation  without  at  the  same  time 
sedulously  educating  the  people  in  the 
probabilities  of  war  and  getting  them 
into  a  state  of  mind  which  will  insure 
the  efficient  use  of  this  machinery  when 
the  time  comes. 

In  the  meantime  what  have  the  leaders 
of  religious  thought,  the  representatives 
of  Christianity,  been  doing?  Some  of 
them,  it  is  fair  to  say,  have  been  doing 
what  they  could  to  counteract  these  tend- 
encies to  enmity  and  to  cultivate  the 
spirit  of  friendship  among  the  nations. 
There  has  never  been  a  day  when  the 
disciples  of  Christ  were  all  wholly  un- 
mindful of  their  calling  as  the  messengers 
of  the  gospel  of  peace,  and  in  the  last 
generation  that  obligation  has  been  more 


THE  PORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         59 

widely  recognized  than  ever  before. 
Nevertheless  it  can  hardly  be  said  that 
the  churches  of  Jesus  Christ  as  a  whole 
have  laid  great  emphasis  on  this  truth. 
The  church  at  large  has  not  been  greatly 
interested  in  the  peace  movement.  In 
the  face  of  this  mighty  world-prepara- 
tion for  war  it  has  not  found  it  necessary 
to  put  forth  any  special  efforts  in  behalf 
of  peace.  Its  main  interests  have  been 
lain  in  other  fields.  The  fact  that  this 
tremendous  accumulation  of  the  ma- 
chinery and  munitions  of  war  has  been 
going  forward  with  increasing  purpose 
and  volume  from  year  to  year,  is  pretty 
good  evidence  that  no  effective  resist- 
ance has  been  made  against  it. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  Christian 
churches  could  not  have  stopped  this 
movement  if  they  had  tried.  That  I 
do  not  believe.  There  are  said  to 
be    seven    hundred    thousand  Christian 


60         THE  FORKS  OF  THE   ROAD 

ministers  in  Europe  and  America.  If 
they  had  set  themselves  with  a  reason- 
able degree  of  unanimity  against  the 
war  propaganda,  basing  their  opposition 
on  the  principles  of  Christ's  gospel, 
their  protest  would  have  been  heeded. 
But  we  shall  never  know  whether  the 
protest  would  have  been  successful  or 
not,  because  it  was  not  made  with  any 
force.  And  it  ought  to  have  been  made. 
It  may  also  be  objected  that  the  Chris- 
tian leaders  had  other  important  work 
to  do.  Had  they  really  any  work  more 
important  than  this?  What  was  it? 
Was  it  the  saving  of  souls?  But  how 
are  souls  lost  more  hopelessly  than  by 
filling  them  with  murderous  hate  of  their 
fellow  men  ?  Was  it  to  rescue  men 
from  hell  ?  But  here  were  several  nations 
organizing  hell  and  bringing  it  to  earth. 
Was  this  fact  hidden  from  their  view  or 
was  it  a  light  concern  of  the  ambassadors 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         61 

of  Christ?  Indeed,  in  view  of  all  that 
was  going  on  before  their  faces  it  is  hard 
to  think  of  any  business  more  urgent 
through  that  eventful  generation  than 
the  preaching  of  the  gospel  of  the  King- 
dom the  gospel  of  human  brotherhood. 
The  fact  that  it  had  been  culpably 
ignored  through  the  former  generations 
was  not  a  good  reason  for  neglecting  to 
emphasize  it  in  the  hour  when  it  was 
needed  most. 


VI 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  MILITARISM 

SO  ineffectual  has  been  the  protest 
of  the  Christian  church  against 
the  growth  of  miUtarism  that  its  pro- 
tagonists among  the  war  lords  and  their 
counselors  and  apologists  have  naturally 
concluded  that  the  time  has  come  to 
put  an  end  to  its  pretensions.  It  can 
hardly  be  wondered  at  that  those  who 
are  leading  in  the  militaristic  regime 
should  begin  to  demand  a  distinct  under- 
standing as  to  the  place  which  Chris- 
tianity is  to  hold  in  the  world  order. 
It  has  been  rather  timidly  claiming  su- 
premacy. Have  not  its  claims  been, 
exorbitant?  Is  it  not  high  time  that 
our  militant  nationalism  should  be  devel- 
62 


THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  63 

oping  and  propagating  its  own  theology  ? 
It  has  been  implicit,  for  a  long  time,  in 
national  policies,  but  it  needs  to  be 
avowed  and  defended. 

The  first  article  of  its  creed  is  negative. 
It  maintains  that  Christianity  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  international  rela- 
tions; in  that  field  its  ethics  have  no 
pertinence.  Between  states  force  is  the 
only  arbiter;  reason  and  good  will  are 
out  of  place  in  world  politics.  Such  is 
the  contention  of  some  of  those  who 
are  seeking  to  direct  the  destinies  of 
nations.  The  Christian  rule  of  life,  it 
is  aSirmed,  governs  the  relations  of  in- 
dividuals, but  not  of  nationalities  — 
"Christian  morality  is  based,"  says 
Bernhardi,  "on  the  law  of  love.  Love 
God  above  all  things,  and  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself.  This  law  can  claim  no  sig- 
nificance for  the  relations  of  one  country 
to  another,  since  its  application  to  politics 


64         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

would  lead  to  a  conflict  of  duties.  The 
love  which  a  man  showed  to  another 
country  as  such  would  imply  a  want  of 
love  for  his  own  countrymen.  Such  a 
system  of  politics  must  inevitably  lead 
men  astray.  Christian  morality  is  per- 
sonal and  social,  and  in  its  nature 
cannot  be  political.  Its  aim  is  to 
promote  morality  of  the  individual, 
in  order  to  strengthen  him  to  work 
unselfishly  in  the  interests  of  the 
community."  ^ 

This  reasoning,  it  must  be  confessed, 
evinces  a  singular  moral  obtuseness. 
That  the  Christian  law  has  application 
only  to  the  life  of  individuals,  and  can- 
not guide  men  in  their  collective  action, 
seems  to  be  the  contention.  Would 
families,  then,  be  exempt  from  its  con- 
trol? Would  a  family,  acting  collec- 
tively, be  entitled  to  ignore  the  law  of 
1 "  Germany  in  the  Next  War,"  p.  29. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  65 

good  neighborhood?  If  one  family  has 
friends  in  another  family  and  seeks  their 
welfare,  does  that  necessarily  imply  a 
want  of  love  among  its  own  members? 
If  a  corporation  considers  the  interests 
of  others  besides  its  stockholders  —  of 
its  employees,  say,  —  does  this  prove 
that  it  is  false  to  its  own  interests  ?  Just 
how  large  must  a  group  of  human  beings 
be  in  order  that  it  may  regard  itself  as 
exempt  in  its  collective  action  from  the 
obligations  of  good  will? 

And  why,  let  us  ask  in  all  humility, 
is  it  impossible  to  think  of  nations  as 
dwelling  together  in  unity,  sharing  the 
good  of  the  world,  treating  one  another 
as  friends?  I  am  not  disposed  to  claim 
for  the  United  States  of  America  any 
moral  superiority  over  other  nations, 
but  it  has  sometimes,  I  believe,  acted 
in  its  dealings  with  other  nations  on 
Christian  principles.     It  gave  Cuba  her 


66         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

liberty,  at  great  cost,  and  it  claimed  in 
return  neither  tribute  nor  dominion. 
It  has  governed  itself  by  the  same  prin- 
ciple in  its  dealings  with  the  Philippines. 
It  had  nothing  to  gain  by  its  interven- 
tion there,  and  when  the  Philippines  are 
set  free,  as  they  surely  will  be  ere  long, 
we  shall  be  much  poorer  in  purse,  and 
none  the  richer  in  lands  or  prestige  for 
all  that  we  have  done  for  them.  And 
when  the  ten  millions  of  indemnity 
money  was  returned  to  China,  the  act 
was  certainly  in  the  truest  sense  an  act 
of  Christian  friendship.  That  was  the 
motive  which  prompted  it  and  the  heart 
of  the  nation  responded  to  the  acts  of 
its  representatives  with  good  will  to 
China.  Most  distinctly  also,  did  our 
Secretary  of  State  declare,  in  the  midst 
of  these  transactions,  that  the  United 
States  means  to  govern  itself  in  all  its 
relations  to  other  nations  by  the  Golden 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         67 

Rule.    There  is  nothing  Utopian  about 
this ;  this  is  history. 

But  it  is  objected  that  states  cannot 
be  expected  permanently  to  remain  in 
friendly  relations  because  there  is  no 
tribunal  above  them  by  which  their 
differences  can  be  adjusted.  "Above 
the  rivalry  of  individuals  and  groups," 
says  Bernhardi,  "stands  the  law,  which 
takes  care  that  injustice  is  kept  within 
bounds,  and  that  the  right  shall  prevail. 
Behind  the  law  stands  the  state,  armed 
with  power  which  it  employs,  and 
rightly  so,  not  merely  to  protect,  but 
actively  to  promote,  the  moral  and  spir- 
itual interests  of  society.  But  there  is 
no  impartial  power  that  stands  above 
the  rivalries  of  states  to  restrain  injustice 
and  to  use  that  rivalry  with  conscious 
purpose  to  promote  the  best  interests 
of  mankind.  Between  states  the  only 
check  on  injustice  is  force,  and  in  morality 


68         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

and  civilization  each  people  must  play 
its  own  part  and  promote  its  own  ends 
and   ideals.'^ 

It  is  not  many  years  since  the  same 
thing  could  have  been  said  of  individuals 
in  all  the  lands  of  earth.  The  only 
check  on  injustice  among  individuals 
was  force,  and  every  man  went  armed 
to  enforce  his  own  claims  and  redress 
his  own  wrongs.  There  was  no  impartial 
power  which  stood  above  the  rivalries 
of  individuals  to  restrain  injustice  in 
any  effective  way,  and  there  were  many 
who  argued  that  there  should  not  be; 
that  the  abolition  of  private  warfare 
would  lead  to  effeminacy  and  degeneracy. 
But  the  time  came  when  the  reign  of 
violence  became  intolerable,  and  ways 
were  found  of  providing  an  impartial 
power  to  stand  above  the  rivalries  of 
individuals  and  preserve  the  peace  of 
society.     Is  it  not  possible  that  states 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE   ROAD         69 

may,  for  the  same  reason,  come  to  the 
same  conclusion?  Is  it  beyond  the 
power  and  the  wisdom  of  states  to  create 
a  tribunal  which  shall  conserve  their 
common  interests  and  adjust  their  dif- 
ferences ? 

In  1789  there  were  upon  this  continent 
thirteen  states  whose  interests  were 
diverse,  whose  institutions  were  not 
identical,  and  between  which  there  was 
grave  danger  of  constant  collision.  There 
was  no  impartial  power  that  stood 
above  them  to  restrain  injustice.  It 
might  have  been  plausibly  argued  that 
there  could  not  be;  that  it  would  be  a 
fatal  thing  for  these  states  to  relinquish 
any  part  of  their  sovereignty;  that 
*'  in  morality  and  civilization  each  people 
must  play  its  own  part  and  promote 
its  own  ends  and  ideals" ;  that  "between 
states  the  only  check  on  injustice  is 
force";    that   "no  power  exists  which 


70         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

can  judge  between  states  and  make  its 
judgment  prevail'';  that  "nothing,  in 
fact,  (was)  left  but  war  to  secure  to  the 
true  elements  of  progress  (in  these 
states)  the  ascendency  over  the  spirits 
of  corruption  and  decay/'  ^ 

It  was  not,  however,  so  argued  in  our 
constitutional  convention,  and  by  bring- 
ing in  the  federal  principle,  these  states 
found  a  way  of  preserving  their  own 
integrity  while  they  merged  some  of 
their  common  interests  and  obligations; 
and,  with  the  exception  of  one  unhappy 
struggle,  arising  from  the  failure  of 
some  of  them  to  give  full  weight  to  the 
federal  obligation,  they  have  lived  to- 
gether for  a  century  and  a  quarter, 
each  guaranteeing  the  security  and  peace 
of  the  others;  each  developing  its  own 
life  in  freedom;    no  state  venturing  to 

^  See  **  Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  pp.  20- 
21. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         71 

encroach  upon  the  territory  of  its  neigh- 
bors; every  state  profiting  by  the  pros- 
perity of  all  its  neighbors.  None  of  us 
on  this  continent  can  believe  that  a 
constant  succession  of  wars  among  these 
states  would  have  more  effectually  se- 
cured to  the  true  elements  of  progress 
in  each  of  them  "the  ascendency  over 
the  spirits  of  corruption  and  decay" 
than  it  has  been  secured  by  the  nearly 
unbroken  peace  which  we  have  enjoyed. 
And  while  the  problem  of  federation 
in  Europe  would  be  much  more  difficult 
than  we  have  found  it  among  our  Amer- 
ican states,  yet  it  is  not  beyond  the 
possibilities  that  some  application  of  the 
principle  of  federation  would  give  to 
the  United  States  of  Europe  or  even  to 
a  league  of  all  the  nations,  the  same 
security  and  peace  that  we  have  enjoyed 
in  the  United  States  of  America. 
But  the  militaristic  theology  goes  much 


72         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

further.  It  is  not  because  a  world  fed- 
eration would  fail  to  preserve  the  peace 
that  it  is  denounced,  it  is  because  it 
might  succeed  in  preserving  the  peace. 
The  one  undesirable  thing  is  peace. 
The  one  thing  needful  to  the  preserva- 
tion and  development  of  the  human 
race  in  its  full  vigor  and  efficiency  is 
war.  "War  is  a  biological  necessity  of 
the  first  importance,  a  regulative  ele- 
ment in  the  life  of  mankind  which  can- 
not be  dispensed  with,  since  without 
it  an  unhealthy  development  will  fol- 
low, which  excludes  every  advancement 
of  the  race,  and  therefore  all  real  civil- 
ization.'' "A  universal  peace  league 
would  be  disastrous  to  all  human  prog- 
ress, which  is  dependent  on  the  clash- 
ing interests,  and  the  unchecked  rivalry 
of  different  groups.''  "It  is  a  persistent 
struggle  for  possessions,  power  and  sov- 
ereignty   which    primarily    governs    the 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         73 

relation  of  one  nation  to  another  and 
right  is  respected  so  far  only  as  it  is 
compatible  with  advantage."  "The  state 
alone,  so  Schleiermacher  once  taught, 
gives  the  individual  the  highest  degree 
of  life.  To  expand  the  idea  of  the  state 
into  that  of  humanity,  and  thus  to  in- 
trust apparently  higher  duties  to  the 
individual,  leads  to  error,  since  in  a 
human  race  conceived  as  a  whole, 
struggle,  and  by  implication  the  most 
essential  vital  principle,  would  be  ruled 
out.  Any  action  in  favor  of  collective 
humanity  outside  the  limits  of  the  state 
and  nationality  is  impossible.  Such  con- 
ceptions belong  to  the  wide  domain  of 
Utopias."  ''This  peace  movement  is 
often  used  simply  to  mask  intensely 
political  schemes.  Its  apparent  hu- 
manitarian idealism  constitutes  its  dan- 
ger. Every  means  must  therefore  be 
employed    to    oppose    these    visionary 


74         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

schemes/'  "The  inevitableness,  the 
idealism,  and  the  blessing  of  war  as 
an  indispensable  and  stimulating  law 
of  development  must  be  repeatedly  em- 
phasized.'' ^  Such  is  the  theology  of 
militarism,  succinctly  and  copiously 
stated. 

The  first  article  of  its  creed  is  that 
the  state  is  the  Supreme  Being,  a  law 
unto  itself,  ruling  over  all,  responsible 
to  none.  The  state  is  the  custodian 
of  all  the  higher  interests,  and  there 
can  be  no  power  above  it.  The  prin- 
ciple of  the  state's  action  is  self-aggran- 
dizement; it  can  owe  to  other  states 
no  duties  which  interfere  with  this. 

The  second  article  is  that  "the  end- 
all  and  the  be-all  of  the  state  is  power, 
*and  he  who  is  not  man  enough  to  look 
them   in   the   face   should   not   meddle 

^ "  Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  Chap.  I, 
passim. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD  75 

with  politics.'  The  advancement  of 
the  power  of  the  state  must  be  first  and 
foremost  the  object  that  guides  the 
statesman's  poHcy.  Among  all  political 
sins  the  sin  of  feebleness  is  the  most 
contemptible;  it  is  the  political  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost."  ^ 

This  takes  the  state  out  of  the  moral 
realm;  the  word  right  has  no  meaning 
in  its  application  to  the  relations  of 
states;  international  law  has  no  force 
or  significance  with  them;  ^' right  is 
respected  only  so  far  as  it  is  compatible 
with  advantaged  ^  The  word  moral  is, 
indeed,  often  used  in  connection  with 
the  actions  of  states,  but  it  is  vacated 
of  all  its  meaning  by  the  qualifications 
put  upon  it.  "The  acts  of  the  state 
cannot  be  judged  by  the  standard  of 
individual  morality."  "The  morality  of 
the  state  must  be  developed  out  of  its 
1  Treitschke,  *'  Politik,"  1,  C.  3. 


76         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

own  peculiar  essence,  just  as  individual 
morality  is  rooted  in  the  personality  of 
the  man  and  his  duties  toward  society.'^  ^ 

The  italics  are  not  the  author's. 

Is  not  the  logic  peculiar?  These  are 
the  propositions: 

1.  Individual  morality  is  rooted  in 
man's  relation  to  other  men,  —  in  "  his 
duties  toward  society." 

2.  States  can  have  no  moral  relation 
to  other  states;  their  morality  must 
be  developed  out  of  their  own  peculiar 
essence. 

3.  Therefore  the  morality  of  states 
is  developed  '^just  as  individual  morality'' 
is  developed. 

Nothing  could  be  more  convincing. 

The  relation  of  God  to  this  scheme  of 
things  is  not  quite  clear.  He  is  occa- 
sionally mentioned,  and  his  assistance, 
especially  in  war,  is  counted  upon,  but 
1 "  Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  p.  45. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         77 

he  does  not  seem  to  have  much  influence 
so  far  as  international  relations  are  con- 
cerned, except  as  a  promoter  of  war. 
"God  will  see  to  it/'  says  Treitschke, 
"that  war  always  recurs  as  a  drastic 
medicine  for  the  human  race."  ^ 

It  would  appear  that  each  nation 
must  have  its  own  God;  religion  is  a 
purely  ethnical  affair.  It  cannot  be 
conceived  that  the  God  who  is  leading 
the  Germans  to  battle  and  assuring 
them  of  victory  is  the  God  of  the  French 
and  the  British  and  the  Russians  and 
the  Italians  also.  The  identity  of  this 
God  is  imperfectly  indicated;  he  is 
possibly  the  God  of  Joshua  and  Saul; 
he  is  certainly  not  the  God  and  Father 
of  Jesus   Christ. 

The  future  of  nations  under  this 
regime  is  left  in  shadow.  It  seems  prob- 
able that  the  lesser  nationalities  will 
i"Politik,"l,  p.  76. 


78         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

disappear;  they  are  regarded  with  dis- 
favor; they  lack  "the  end-all  and  the 
be-all  of  nations/'  which  is  physical 
power,  and  there  can  be  no  scruples 
about  absorbing  them,  when  the  con- 
venient juncture  arrives.  But  it  would 
also  appear  that  the  merging  of  all  the 
nationalities  in  a  single  world-empire 
should  be  regarded  with  equal  disap- 
proval ;  for  that  would  eliminate  struggle 
and  hasten  degeneracy.  What  is  con- 
templated seems  to  be  the  preservation 
of  a  few  strong  nations,  each  capable 
of  maintaining  itself  in  war,  and  of  in- 
flicting vast  damage  on  its  antagonists, 
so  that  the  continuous  struggle  may  be 
perpetuated,  through  which  alone  na- 
tional vigor  is  preserved  and  augmented. 
The  future  of  the  race  is  therefore  con- 
ceived to  be  an  indefinite  succession  of 
devastating  wars.  Inasmuch  as  the  arts 
and  implements  of  war,  upon  the  produc- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         79 

tion  of  which  the  efBciency  of  the  na- 
tion will  be  concentrated,  are  sure  to  be 
increasingly  destructive,  the  conditions 
of  life  upon  the  planet  are  best  left  to 
the  imagination.  It  would  seem  to 
portend  the  speedy  destruction  of  the 
human  race. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  this  outlook 
will  ultimately  prove  attractive  to  all 
the  nations.  From  the  destiny  to  which 
militarism  is  inviting  them  most  of  them 
are  likely  to  draw  back.  And  the  time 
may  come  when,  between  the  nations 
adhering  to  the  militaristic  program 
and  those  preferring  a  more  pacific 
relation,  a  deadly  conflict  will  ensue. 
For,  on  the  militaristic  basis,  there  does 
not  appear  to  be  any  way  of  putting 
an  end  to  militarism  except  by  destroy- 
ing the  nations  which  make  it  the  founda- 
tion of  their  existence.  Is  not  this  the 
tragedy  of  the  situation,  that  nations. 


80         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

adopting  the  maxim  that  might  makes 
right,  are  driven,  by  the  logic  of  events, 
into  a  coil  from  which  they  can  only 
escape  by  exterminating  each  other? 

Another  highly  probable  consequence 
of  the  repudiation  of  morality  in  inter- 
national relations  would  be  the  serious 
weakening  of  its  bond  within  the  nation. 
If  force  is  the  only  arbiter  between  na- 
tions it  will  hardly  be  possible  to  main- 
tain a  higher  principle  in  the  relations  of 
individuals  or  classes.  A  double  stand- 
ard of  obligation  will  be  enforced  with 
difficulty.  "It  is  not  possible  to  con- 
ceive/' says  Mr.  Hobhouse,  "that  we 
can  put  off  our  humanity  or  any  other 
of  the  virtues  of  civilization  in  our  deal- 
ings beyond  the  frontier,  without  im- 
pairing their  sanctity  and  weakening 
the  force  with  which  they  bind  us  in 
our  dealings  with  one  another.  There 
is  no  evil  power  more  deadly  in  public 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         81 

affairs  than  that  of  the  bad  precedent. 
We  cannot  deny  the  vaUdity  of  a  moral 
principle  in  one  relation  without  sapping 
its  strength  in  all."  ^ 

No  criticism  of  the  militaristic  theology 
has  been  more  searching  than  that  of 
Friedrich  Nietzsche,  who  is  widely  re- 
puted to  be  its  chief  prophet.  Con- 
sistency is  not  to  be  looked  for  in  the 
utterances  of  this  vagarious  thinker,  but 
one  comes  on  flashes  of  insight  which  are 
almost  unearthly,  and  this  is  one  of  them  : 

"No  government  will  nowadays  admit 
that  it  maintains  an  army  in  order  to 
satisfy  occasionally  its  passion  for  con- 
quest. The  army  is  said  to  serve  only 
defensive  purposes.  This  morality,  which 
justifies  self-defense,  is  called  in  as  the 
government's  advocate.  This  means, 
however,  reserving  morality  for  ourselves 
and  immorality  for  our  neighbor,  be- 
1 "  Democracy  and  Reaction,''  p.  201. 


82         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

cause  he  must  be  thought  eager  for 
attack  and  conquest,  if  our  state  is 
forced  to  consider  means  of  self-defense. 
"At  the  same  time,  by  our  explana- 
tion of  our  need  of  an  army  (because 
he  denies  the  lust  of  attack  just  as  our 
state  does,  and  ostensibly  also  main- 
tains his  army  for  defensive  reasons)  we 
proclaim  him  a  hypocrite  and  cunning 
criminal  who  would  fain  seize  by  surprise, 
without  any  fighting,  a  harmless  and 
unwary  victim.  In  this  attitude  all  states 
face  each  other  today.  They  presuppose 
evil  intention  on  their  neighbor's  part 
and  good  intentions  on  their  own.  This 
hypothesis,  however,  is  an  inhuman 
notion,  as  bad  and  worse  than  war. 
Nay,  at  bottom  it  is  a  challenge  and 
motive  to  war,  foisting  as  it  does  upon 
the  neighboring  state  the  charge  of 
immorality,  and  thus  provoking  hostile 
intentions  and  acts. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         83 

"  The  doctrine  of  the  army  as  a  means 
of  self-defense  must  be  abjured  as  completely 
as  the  lust  of  conquest. 

"Perhaps  a  memorable  day  will  come 
when  a  nation  renowned  in  wars  and 
victories,  distinguished  by  the  highest 
development  of  military  order  and  intel- 
ligence, and  accustomed  to  make  the 
heaviest  sacrifices  to  these  objects,  will 
voluntarily  exclaim:  'We  will  break 
our  swords,'  and  will  destroy  its  whole 
military  system,  lock,  stock  and  barrel. 
Making  ourselves  defenseless  (after  hav- 
ing been  the  most  strongly  defended) 
from  a  loftiness  of  sentiment  —  that  is 
the  means  towards  genuine  peace,  which 
must  always  rest  upon  a  pacific  disposi- 
tion. The  so-called  armed  peace  that 
prevails  at  present  in  all  countries  is 
a  sign  of  a  bellicose  disposition,  of  a  dis- 
position that  trusts  neither  itself  nor 
its    neighbor,    and,    partly    from    hate. 


84         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

partly  from  fear,  refuses  to  lay  down  its 
weapons.  Better  to  perish  than  to  hate 
and  fear,  and  twice  as  far  better  to  perish 
than  to  make  oneself  hated  and  feared. 
This  must  some  day  become  the  supreme 
maxim  of  every  political  community, 

"Our  liberal  representatives  of  the 
people,  as  is  well  known,  have  not  the 
time  for  reflection  on  the  nature  of 
humanity,  or  they  would  know  that 
they  are  working  in  vain  when  they 
work  for  'a  gradual  diminution  of  the 
military  burdens.'  On  the  contrary,  when 
the  distress  of  these  burdens  is  greatest, 
the  sort  of  God  who  alone  can  help  here 
will  be  nearest.  The  tree  of  military 
glory  can  only  be  destroyed  at  one 
swoop,  with  one  stroke  of  lightning. 
But,  as  you  know,  lightning  comes  from 
the  cloud  and  from  above."  ^ 

*  "  Human,  ail-too  Human :  The  Wanderer 
and  his  Shadow."    Aphorism,  284. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         85 

Have  we  not  found  Saul  among  the 
prophets?  The  psychology  of  mili- 
tarism, the  true  inwardness  of  "pre- 
paredness"—  was  it  ever  laid  so  bare? 
Must  not  every  man  who  will  take  a 
little  time  "for  reflection  on  the  nature 
of  humanity'^  know  that  it  is  absolutely 
true?  If  an  angel  with  a  trumpet 
could  but  fly  over  every  camp  and  every 
court  and  every  capital  on  the  planet 
proclaiming  these  words  with  a  voice 
of  thunder,  must  they  not  carry  con- 
viction with  them  ? 

It  is  not  to  the  war  lords  alone  that 
these  flaming  words  should  bear  reproof 
and  admonition,  but  to  the  Christian 
church  as  well.  Here  is  the  message 
which  she  ought  to  have  spoken  and  has 
failed  to  speak.  Here  is  the  very  sub- 
stance of  that  gospel  of  good  will  and 
peace  which  was  committed  to  her  trust 
and  which  she  has  wrapped  in  a  napkin 


86         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

and  hidden  under  her  altars.  It  has 
been  left  to  a  man  who  has  made  him- 
self known  as  the  contemptuous  reviler 
of  the  Christian  church  to  give  expres- 
sion to  the  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ 
about  international  morality.  If  the 
seven  hundred  thousand  Christian  minis- 
ters had  been  faithfully  preaching,  for  the 
last  fifty  years,  this  doctrine  of  Nietzsche 
concerning  "the  means  toward  Genuine 
Peace''  this  war  would  never  have  been 
begun.  And  nothing  but  a  clear  recog- 
nition of  this  truth  will  ever  bring  per- 
manent peace. 


VII 

THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

FROM  this  survey  of  the  spread  of 
mUitarism  one  rises  with  some 
feeHng  of  bewilderment  and  dismay. 
The  heart  cries  out  against  the  awful 
carnage  which  is  raging,  in  which  more 
than  two  million  and  a  half  of  men  have 
already  been  slain  and  many  more  made 
helpless  for  hfe;  in  which  so  many 
families  have  been  pauperized  and  so 
many  lives  blasted  and  embittered,  and 
which  is  still  sweeping  on  with  no 
promise  of  termination  or  abatement. 
Great  God  in  heaven,  is  there  no  cure 
for  this  madness?  Is  there  no  force 
of  reason,  of  justice,  of  pity,  of  shame, 
which  can  move    upon    the    minds   of 

87 


88         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

the  few  men  who  control  this  situa- 
tion and  are  prolonging  this  agony? 
There  is  no  sign  or  promise  of  any.  So 
far  as  now  appears  this  insensate  de- 
struction of  all  things  fair  and  good  will 
go  on  and  on  interminably.  Both  parties 
insist  on  continuing  the  fight  until  the 
other  is  crushed  or  crippled,  and  before 
this  is  accomplished  a  good  share  of  the 
hardly  won  gains  of  civilization  will 
have  been  cast  into  the  abyss.  Could 
some  miracle  open  the  eyes  of  the  Kaiser 
to  descry  the  dawn  of  that  "memorable 
day"  foretold  by  Nietzsche,  when  a 
nation  renowned  in  wars  and  victories 
"will  voluntarily  exclaim,  'Let  us  break 
our  swords,"'  how  soon  all  this  misery 
would  be  at  an  end!  And  that  nation^p 
from  that  moment,  would  be  the  safest 
and  most  prosperous  nation  in  the  world. 
There  would  be  room  enough  for  it  in 
the  sun;    all  the  gates  would  be  open 


THE  PORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         89 

to  its  commerce;  all  the  seas  would 
speed  its  ships ;  fearing  no  foes  it  would 
have  no  foes.  If  a  country  like  Ger- 
many could  fling  into  the  pit  its  weapons 
of  force,  and  go  forth  trusting  in  the 
might  of  good  will,  how  soon  the  world 
would  follow!  The  Kaiser  has  his  eye 
on  Alexander,  or  Napoleon,  or  that  fierce 
Hohenzollern  ancestor  of  his;  the  day 
is  past  for  that  kind  of  glory ;  but  there 
is  something  within  his  reach,  how  much 
more  glorious!  If  only  he  could  see, 
even  he,  in  this  his  day,  the  prize  that  is 
beckoning  to  him  from  the  sky!  But 
he  will  not  see  it;  the  mania  of  mili- 
tarism is  upon  him  and  more  or  less  of 
the  same  madness  darkens  the  counsel 
of  all  the  rulers;  it  has  come  to  be  an 
obsession  that  force  is  the  only  arbiter 
of  national  differences;  there  is  no 
ruler  in  all  these  Christian  nations  who 
dares  to  trust  in  the  might  of  the  weapons 


90         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

that  are  not  carnal.  So  the  war  will  go 
on.  Apparently  there  is  no  remedy.  It 
is  hopeless  to  argue  with  the  insane  or 
to  charm  the  deaf  with  soothing  music. 
War  is  essential  unreason,  and  no  devices 
of  man  will  rationalize  its  madness.  It 
will  cease  when  the  belligerents  are 
exhausted.  Possibly  one  of  the  com- 
batants may  be  a  little  less  punished  than 
the  other,  but  the  advantage  is  likely  to 
be  delusive;  no  matter  how  it  ends, 
every  one  of  the  nations  that  has  taken 
part  in  it  will  be  vastly  worse  off  than 
it  was  at  the  beginning,  and  they  will 
all  know  that  it  is  so.  The  victors,  if 
there  should  be  any  who  can  claim  vic- 
tory, will  be  quite  as  sure  of  it  as  the 
vanquished. 

When  it  ends  some  kind  of  tribunal 
will  have  to  be  assembled  to  parcel  out 
the  territory  of  the  contending  nations, 
and  to  distribute  what  is  left  of  the 


THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         91 

wealth  of  the  world.  There  will  be  as 
many  square  miles  after  the  war  as 
there  were  before  the  war,  but  many  of 
them  will  be  greatly  desolated  and 
impoverished,  and  many  of  those  who 
are  left  to  occupy  them  will  be  maimed 
and  naked  and  hungry  and  shelterless. 
Moreover,  all  these  representatives  of 
lately  belligerent  nations  will  bring  with 
them  the  consciousness  of  the  terrible 
burdens  with  which  the  war  has  loaded 
them.  Before  that  Congress  can  as- 
semble there  will  be  time  to  count  the 
cost  of  the  war  and  to  face  the  devasta- 
tions it  has  wrought  and  the  responsi- 
bilities which  it  has  entailed.  No  reck- 
oning so  appalling  as  that  will  be  has 
ever  before  been  set  before  the  human 
mind.  No  problem  so  stupendous  as 
theirs  has  ever  been  attacked  by  mortal 
statesmanship.  The  exceptional  dimen- 
sions of  the  events  behind  them  and  the 


92         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

burdens  upon  them  and  the  issues  be- 
fore them  can  hardly  be  ignored.  It  is 
fair  to  assume  that  the  men  represent- 
ing the  great  nations  in  this  council 
will  be  men  with  some  knowledge  of 
history,  some  adequate  information  re- 
specting the  existing  condition  of  their 
own  nations,  some  power  of  estimating 
the  tasks  upon  their  hands.  Such  men 
will  not  be  able  to  exclude  from  their 
own  minds  the  truth  that  the  past  holds 
in  it  nothing  but  admonition  and  warn- 
ing for  them;  that  all  the  traditions  of 
diplomacy  have  been  shattered;  that 
the  maxims  and  assumptions  on  which 
the  publicists  have  tried  to  regulate 
national  affairs  are  utterly  discredited 
and  exploded ;  that  none  of  the  contriv- 
ances by  which  temporary  peace  has 
been  patched  up  in  former  days  is  today 
anything  better  than  an  awful  example. 
What  has  it  brought  to  the  nations  — 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         93 

this  whole  policy  of  selfishness  and  strife 
on  which  hitherto  all  national  relations 
have  been  regulated?  It  has  made  of 
our  own  populous  cities  heaps  of  ruins, 
it  has  clogged  our  harbors  with  wreckage, 
it  has  turned  our  fields  and  orchards 
into  cemeteries;  it  has  filled  our  streets 
with  cripples,  it  has  draped  in  black 
our  public  assemblies,  it  has  heaped 
up  mountains  of  national  indebtedness 
which  will  sap  the  life  of  our  laboring 
classes  for  generations  to  come.  This 
is  what  militarism  has  wrought.  It 
has  led  the  nations  through  centuries 
of  steadily  accumulating  disaster  to  this 
culminating  catastrophe. 

It  will  not  be  possible  for  these 
men  to  evade  or  ignore  the  fact 
that  the  collapse  of  civilization  by 
which  they  are  surrounded  is  the 
natural  and  inevitable  result  of  the 
militaristic  policy,  the  central  assump- 


94         THE   FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

tion  of  which  is  that  some  or  all  other 
nations  are  enemies. 

Nor  will  they  be  able  to  hide  from 
themselves  the  certainty  that  if  each 
nation  insists  on  continuing  to  be  a  law 
unto  itself  and  on  making  its  own  inter- 
ests supreme  and  paramount,  the  natural 
reactions  will  ensue,  retribution  will 
repeat  itself  and  the  same  dreadful 
harvesting  —  only  more  dire  and  more 
universal  —  will  be  ready  for  the  reaper 
before  the  end  of  another  generation. 

In  short,  the  men  who  assemble  to 
make  the  adjustments  which  will  be 
required  at  the  close  of  the  war  will 
have  to  face  the  fact  that  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect  can  no  more  be  evaded 
by  nations  than  by  individuals.  Look- 
ing backward  they  must  see  that  in 
founding  all  their  policy  as  nations  on 
the  principle  of  egoistic  nationalism, 
they     have     daringly     and     defiantly 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         95 

trampled  under  foot  the  law  by  which 
God  has  made  men  to  live  together.  A 
more  flagrant  defiance  of  the  natural 
order  of  the  universe  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  imagine  than  that  in  which 
human  governments  have  hitherto  per- 
sisted. In  these  human  governments 
are  gathered  up  the  highest  forms  of 
human  activity.  The  responsibilities  for 
right  action  of  those  who  administer 
them  are  the  most  weighty  with  which 
men  are  endowed.  Their  functions  are 
the  most  sacred,  the  most  godlike  which 
human  beings  are  permitted  to  exercise. 
They,  of  all  men,  are  bound  to  know  the 
laws  of  life,  and  reverently  to  obey  them. 
To  conceive  of  them  either  as  being  un- 
aware of  the  existence  of  these  laws  or 
as  assuming  that  they  have  no  appli- 
cation to  nations,  is  impossible.  And 
when  in  the  face  of  heaven,  rulers  not 
merely  ignore  these  laws  but  brazenly 


96         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

set  them  at  defiance,  they  are  invoking 
a  terrible  retribution.  That  this  war  is 
the  most  deadly  penalty  which  human 
nature  has  ever  been  called  to  pay  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at ;  it  ought  to  be ; 
the  crime  is  the  most  heinous  that  history 
records. 

It  can  hardly  be  that  the  men  who 
make  up  this  council  of  the  nations  will 
be  unaware  of  these  facts.  The  spirit 
of  humanity,  "stabbed  broad  awake" 
by  this  hellish  slaughter,  will  hold  them 
sharply  to  the  account.  Is  it  conceiv- 
able, then,  that  they  can  consider  the 
possibility  of  returning  to  the  old  basis 
of  national  egoism,  and  basing  inter- 
national relations  on  the  presumption 
of  war?  I  cannot  think  so  meanly  of 
humankind.  I  believe  that  the  world  has 
had  its  lesson,  and  that  even  the  war- 
lords must  be  in  the  way  of  learning  it. 

The   crucial   question   for   civilization 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         97 

is  the  question  whether  this  present 
world  is  learning  it  or  not.  Most  of 
the  discussion  about  the  coming  settle- 
ment of  this  strife  rests  upon  the  as- 
sumption that  the  representatives  of  the 
nations  will  come  to  this  council  with  the 
same  ideas  in  their  heads  that  were  there 
in  July,  1914;  that  they  will  have  the 
same  notions  about  the  adequacy  of 
war  to  solve  all  national  problems  that 
they  had  then;  that  they  will  proceed 
to  seek  for  some  adjustment  by  which 
the  smaller  nations  shall  be  compelled 
to  take  what  the  bigger  ones  choose  to 
give  them,  and  the  big  nations  shall 
agree  among  themselves  to  abstain  from 
war,  temporarily,  until  they  may  repair 
their  wasted  energies,  and  rebuild  their 
crippled  armaments,  and  raise  up  an- 
other generation  of  young  men  for 
slaughter.  The  assumption  of  contin- 
uous war,   and  of  war  as  the  ultimate 


98         THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

and  only  final  arbitrament  of  national 
differences  is  the  assumption  on  which 
all  international  relations  have  rested 
hitherto.  The  common  notion  seems  to 
be  that  that  assumption  will  rule  the 
thinking  of  the  members  of  that  confer- 
ence. If  it  does  so,  the  future  of  our 
race  is  very  dark.  If  humanity  has 
learned  nothing  in  this  dies  irae,  one 
wonders  what  will  ever  make  it  wise. 
I  confess  that  I  am  unable  to  entertain 
such  a  benumbing  conception.  I  can- 
not even  imagine  that  this  bloody  lesson 
will  be  lost  upon  the  world.  The  ex- 
pectation that  the  representatives  of 
the  people  will  come  together  in  that 
conference  under  the  age-long  obsession 
of  militarism,  prepared  to  commit  the 
future  of  the  world  to  the  continuous 
artitrament  of  war,  involves  a  degree 
of  pessimism  concerning  human  nature 
to  which   my  mind  will   not  go  down. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD         99 

The  only  other  assumption  to  which 
this  Congress  can  possibly  come  is 
the  assumption  that  peace  among  the 
nations  is  the  only  conceivable  interna- 
tional policy,  and  that  the  entire  business 
of  that  august  assemblage  is  to  prepare 
the  way  of  peace  and  to  lead  the  peoples 
into  it.  In  view  of  all  that  the  world 
has  seen  of  the  inevitable  consequences 
of  the  militaristic  policy,  it  does  not  seem 
incredible  that  this  conviction  should  be 
uppermost  in  the  minds  of  these  rep- 
resentatives. It  is  not  a  wholly  vision- 
ary belief  that  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  will  come  out  of  this  ordeal 
convinced  that  it  is  as  stupid  to  go  on 
building  the  welfare  of  the  world  on  the 
basis  of  militarism  as  it  would  be  to  buiJd 
a  skyscraper  on  quicksand.  And  if  that 
conviction  shall  have  gained  a  hold  on 
the  thought  of  the  world,  it  will  be  en- 
tirely possible  to  arrange  a  plan  by  which 


100   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

all  the  resources  of  the  nations  shall  be 
pledged  to  the  maintenance  of  peace. 
What  the  details  of  that  plan  shall  be 
I  am  not  concerned  to  discuss ;  the  first 
question  is  whether  this  shall  be  regarded 
as  the  fundamental  assumption  of  inter- 
national relations. 

On  one  or  the  other  of  these  assimip- 
tions  the  work  of  that  assembly  will  be 
based.  Its  acts  will  make  it  plain 
whether  it  expects  what  we  call  civili- 
zation to  go  forward  on  a  war  basis  or 
on  a  peace  basis.  Civilization  is  at 
the  forks  of  the  road.  It  is  a  great 
crisis  in  history.  The  nations  may 
choose  the  way  of  life,  or  go  on  in  the 
ways  of  death.  And  the  Voice  of  the 
infinite  Wisdom  and  Mercy  is  crying 
to  the  children  of  men  today:  "Turn 
ye,  turn  ye  into  the  ways  of  life,  for  why 
will  ye  die?" 

It  would  seem  that  there  could  be  but 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE.  J10A7>       101 

one  answer  to  this  call.  Every  one  of 
these  contending  nations  declares  this  day 
that  it  is  fighting  to  put  an  end  to  war, 
to  make  permanent  peace  possible.  That 
is  something  quite  new  under  the  sun. 
Never  before  were  so  many  of  the  great 
powers  of  the  world  engaged  in  war, 
and  never  before  have  all  the  belligerents 
united  in  such  a  declaration.  Is  it  not 
a  sign  of  the  times  ?  If  they  are  sincere 
they  may  all  win  what  they  are  fighting 
for.  That  surely  would  be  a  glorious 
victory.  And  how  easily  it  might  be 
won,  if  they  would  all  stop  and  determine 
not  to  shed  another  drop  of  blood.  Why 
can  they  not  see  that  war  will  not  be 
ended  by  fighting,  any  more  than  fire 
will  be  put  out  by  piling  on  fuel,  or  en- 
mity extinguished  by  hating,  or  false- 
hood by  lying,  or  sin  by  sinning?  This 
is  the  immemorial  delusion  of  humanity, 
and   the   only   question   respecting   the 


102      THE  jFGRKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

discontinuance  of  this  war  which  has 
any  interest  for  a  sane  man  is  the  ques- 
tion whether  this  delusion  may  not  be 
dispelled  —  whether  this  war,  which  in 
the  vastness  of  its  devastations  utterly 
defies  comparison  with  any  of  the  wars 
which  have  preceded  it,  may  not  have 
forced  upon  the  mad  world  some  glimmer 
of  the  truth  that  its  whole  international 
policy  has  been  utterly,  brutally,  stupidly 
wrong,  and  that  the  day  of  Judgment  has 
come,  with  a  mighty  voice  out  of  heaven 
calling  to  the  nations  to  repent  and  turn. 
If  the  nations  have  not  learned  this 
truth,  all  the  rest  of  their  knowledge 
will  be  only  a  snare  to  them,  smoothing 
the  descent  of  Avernus. 

What  the  belligerent  nations  are  learn- 
ing we  cannot  be  sure ;  but  it  is  of  some 
importance  to  ask  whether  this  nation, 
standing  apart  from  the  conflict  and 
watching  its  progress,  is  learning  any- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   103 

thing  from  the  dreadful  spectacle.  What 
do  the  American  people  think  their  own 
attitude  ought  to  be  toward  this  in- 
human business?  I  am  sure  that  most 
of  them  are  glad  that  they  are  not  any 
more  implicated  in  it  than  every  nation 
needs  must  be ;  and  that  they  are  grate- 
ful for  the  steady  hand  which  has  guided 
us  safely  through  the  rough  waters.  Nor 
does  there  appear  to  be  any  present 
prospect  that  we  could  do  anything  to 
make  peace.  I  think  that  there  ought 
to  have  been  from  the  beginning  a  con- 
certed effort  on  the  part  of  the  neutral 
powers  to  bring  influences  to  bear  upon 
the  belligerents  in  favor  of  armistice 
and  mediation ;  at  this  juncture  it  seems 
doubtful  whether  such  an  effort  would 
avail  anything,  but  ought  we  not  to 
try? 

At  any  rate  we  are  not  unconcerned 
spectators;     our    interests    are    deeply 


104   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

involved  in  the  outcome  of  this  war. 
Not  only  are  our  deepest  feelings  stirred 
by  it,  but  our  ideals  are  in  the  crucible ; 
our  institutions  are  under  fire;  all  the 
great  things  that  this  nation  stands  for 
are  to  be  vindicated  or  discredited  by 
the  issues  of  this  conflict. 

We  have  invested  perhaps  as  much  as 
any  other  nation  in  the  future  of  civili- 
zation; and  what  that  future  is  to  be 
concerns  us  deeply.  We  want  to  pro- 
tect our  investments.  As  Owen  Wister 
has  said,  we  are  in  the  boat,  and  it  is 
part  of  our  business  to  see  that  nobody 
rocks  the  boat.  Freedom,  social  justice, 
democracy,  opportunity,  brotherhood  — 
these  are  the  things  that  are  dear  to  us. 
We  do  not  always  cherish  them  so  faith- 
fully as  we  might,  but  they  are,  after 
all,  the  fundamental  things  in  the  life 
of  this  nation,  and  we  want  to  see  them 
prevail  throughout  all  the  world.    We 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   105 

know  that  they  cannot  prevail  unless 
the  world  is  at  peace.  We  know  that 
such  a  strife  as  this  threatens  them  all, 
and  that  its  perpetuation  would  render 
them  all  very  insecure.  We  look  for- 
ward, therefore,  to  the  coming  Congress 
of  the  nations  with  the  deepest  solicitude. 

Probably  we  have  a  right  to  assume 
that  we  shall  have  some  part  in  it.  A 
tribunal  that  will  undertake  to  make 
rules  for  the  intercourse  of  the  nations 
of  the  earth  could  not  very  well  leave 
us  out.  And  the  question  for  this 
nation  is,  what  things  shall  we  stand  for 
in  that  tribunal  ? 

The  fundamental  question  before  that 
tribunal  will  be,  as  we  have  seen,  whether 
the  world  shall  prepare  for  the  perpetua- 
tion of  war,  or  for  the  prevalence  of 
peace.  The  Council  will  provide  for 
one  or  the  other,  and  its  decision  will 
probably  give  direction  to  the  life  of  the 


106   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

world  for  the  next  twenty-five  years. 
The  United  States  will  have  a  vote  in 
that  council.  Which  is  it  going  to  vote 
for? 

It  is  time  now  to  be  making  up  our 
minds  about  this,  for  it  is  possible  for  us 
to  drift  or  be  driven  into  a  position  in 
which  we  can  only  vote  the  wrong  way. 
I  think  that  the  great  majority  of  Ameri- 
cans would  vote  today  the  right  way  on 
this  question.  But  sinister  and  infernal 
influences  are  at  work  to  push  them  into 
the  maelstrom  of  militarism.  There  are 
hysterical  alarmists  who  are  magnifying 
the  possibilities  of  invasion.  There  are 
tremendous  financial  combinations  in- 
volving billions  of  capital,  which  stand 
to  make  immense  profits  out  of  war,  and 
out  of  the  preparation  for  war,  and  they 
are  moving  heaven  and  earth  today  to 
drive  this  nation  into  the  complications 
which  will  put  money  in  their  purses. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   107 

And  there  are  of  course  a  good  many 
partly  developed  human  beings  who  are 
always  infuriated  by  the  smell  of  blood, 
and  can  never  see  any  fighting  going 
on  without  wanting  to  have  a  hand  in  it. 
The  influences  which  are  thus  set  in 
motion  get  possession  of  a  good  many  of 
our  newspapers  and  of  some  of  our  finan- 
cial magnates  and  of  a  lot  of  emotional 
and  ambitious  politicians  inside  Congress 
and  outside,  and  there  is  grave  peril  lest 
this  nation  should  be  stampeded  into  an 
attitude  in  which  it  can  take  no  helpful 
part  in  the  deliberations  of  the  world 
tribunal. 

Suppose  that  with  this  tribunal  before 
our  eyes,  and  our  ears  ringing  with  the 
assurances  of  all  the  belligerents  that 
they  are  fighting  to  put  an  end  to  war, 
our  Congress  proceeds  to  appropriate 
$500,000,000  for  the  increase  of  our 
armament  and  the  enlargement   of   our 


108   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

armies.  Can  we  consistently  or  de- 
cently go  to  such  an  international  tri- 
bunal and  lift  up  our  voice  in  favor  of 
a  policy  which  looks  toward  the  aboli- 
tion of  war  ? 

I  fear  that  our  appeal  would  be  listened 
to  in  a  constrained  silence.  What  would 
be  said  I  cannot  imagine;  the  reserves 
of  diplomacy  would  all  be  maintained, 
no  doubt,  but  under  their  breath  these 
ambassadors  of  the  great  nations  would 
be  saying  something  like  this:  "Yes, 
we  have  heard  that  you,  the  young  giant 
of  the  West,  have  desired  to  be  prince 
among  the  peace-makers.  But  you  have 
a  queer  way  of  going  about  it.  While 
we  have  been  getting  surfeited  with 
war,  you  seem  to  have  been  getting  up 
an  appetite  for  it.  You  heard  us  crying 
out,  in  the  throes  of  our  great  conflict, 
that  we  were  fighting  to  put  an  end  to 
war.    Did    you    think    that    we    were 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   109 

lying?  Or  did  you,  perhaps,  think  that 
when  the  rest  of  us  were  crippled  by  our 
losses  and  proposing  to  turn  our  swords 
into  plowshares  it  would  be  a  good 
time  for  you  to  reverse  the  process? 
Just  what  does  this  policy  of  yours  mean  ? 
When  we  begin  to  suggest  the  possibility 
of  sending  some  of  our  ships  to  the  junk 
pile  you  spend  a  few  hundred  millions 
in  building  new  ones  and  then  come  to 
this  Congress.  Do  we  understand  that 
the  new  ships  were  built  for  the  junk 
pile?" 

Some  such  demands  for  explanation, 
much  more  politely  stated,  we  would 
be  likely  to  hear.  They  might  be  em- 
barrassing. It  is  rather  better,  if  pos- 
sible, to  avoid  them. 

Without,  then,  insisting  on  any  high 
principles  of  pacifism  in  our  present 
national  policy  it  is  at  least  reasonable 
to  suggest  that  our  nation,  confronted 


110   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

with  the  probable  responsibiHties  of 
action  in  such  a  tribunal,  can  well  afford 
to  wait  until  the  tribunal  reaches  its 
decisions  before  launching  the  country 
upon  a  policy  of  militaristic  prepared- 
ness. If  there  were  any  reasonable 
fears  of  immediate  invasion,  we  might 
bestir  ourselves  to  get  ready.  If  we 
are  convinced  of  the  insincerity  of  the 
declarations  of  all  the  great  nations  that 
this  war  must  be  the  end  of  war,  we  may 
feel  less  sure  of  what  should  be  our  policy. 
But  when  issues  of  such  tremendous  im- 
portance to  our  nation  hang  upon  the 
question,  is  it  not  wise  to  wait  and  see 
if  they  will  not  make  good  their  promise. 
Our  faith  in  their  sincerity  may  help 
them  to  be  sincere.  Our  demonstration 
that  we  have  no  faith  in  them  will  weaken 
their  faith  in  themselves  and  their  friend- 
ship for  us. 

If  they  shall  agree  upon  a  League  to 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       HI 

enforce  peace  which  promises  to  put  an 
end  to  war,  we  shall  have  been  delivered 
from  a  great  burden;  if  they  show  by 
their  action  that  they  mean  to  per- 
petuate war,  we  shall  have  time  enough 
before  any  of  them  are  ready  to  attack 
us,  to  make  such  preparation  as  may  be 
necessary. 

The  militarists  and  alarmists  are  all 
the  while  trying  to  excite  our  fears  by 
pointing  out  the  risk  we  are  running  by 
neglecting  to  make  adequate  prepara- 
tion for  war  with  nobody  knows  whom. 
Is  there  not  at  least  equal  danger  that 
by  making  such  preparation  we  may 
make  our  own  nation  a  stumbling  block 
in  the  way  of  a  movement  toward  the 
world's  peace? 


VIII 
WHERE  IS  THE  CHURCH? 

THE  nations  are  at  the  forks  of 
the  road.  Where  is  the  church? 
The  answer  is  an  echo.  Apparently  it 
comes  near  to  being  a  neghgible  quan- 
tity. If  we  cannot  say  that  it  is  out 
of  sight  and  hearing  we  must  say  that 
its  presence  makes  httle  impression  and 
that  its  voice  is  scarcely  heard  above  the 
din. 

His  Holiness  the  Pope  has  been  ex- 
pressing some  Christian  regrets  over 
the  lamentable  condition  of  Europe; 
he  implores  the  faithful  to  desist  from 
slaughtering  one  another,  but  apparently 
they  have  paid  but  slight  attention  to 

112 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       113 

him.  Of  course  the  Kaiser  and  the 
Czar  and  King  George  and  President 
Poincar6  and  King  Humbert  are  all 
much  obliged  to  him  for  his  good  wishes, 
but  they  do  not  see  their  way  clear  to 
consider  them  at  present.  People  who 
are  lying  awake  nights  for  fear  of  what 
the  Pope  and  the  Curia  may  do  to  over- 
turn governments  and  revolutionize  so- 
ciety might  well  be  reassured  when  they 
see  how  little  poor  Benedict  is  able  to 
effect  in  a  political  way  in  the  countries 
where  his  adherents  are  most  numerous. 
We  could  all  wish  that  his  influence  were 
far  more  potent  in  those  countries  just 
now,  for  we  are  sure  that  it  would  be 
exercised  in  behalf  of  peace.  Unfortu- 
nately his  church,  like  all  the  other 
churches,  has  stripped  itself  of  the  power 
of  interfering  effectively  in  a  juncture 
like  this. 
As  for  the  other  churches  it  is  plain 


114   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

that  the  churches  in  England  are  in 
the  war  for  England  and  the  churches  of 
France  for  France,  and  the  churches  of 
Germany  for  Germany,  and  the  churches 
of  Italy  for  Italy,  and  the  churches  of 
Russia  for  Russia,  and  the  churches  of 
Turkey  for  Turkey.  There  may  be 
small  groups  among  them  whose  hearts 
are  not  in  the  war,  but  as  a  rule  the 
churches  of  all  these  countries  are  strongly 
supporting  the  military  policy  of  their 
respective  governments.  Their  members 
would  vote,  I  suppose,  ten  to  one,  for 
the  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war 
until  their  side  has  won  a  decisive  vic- 
tory. So  far  as  the  churches  are  con- 
cerned they  appear  to  be  governed  wholly 
by  the  principle  of  patriotism;  their 
Christianity  means  patriotism;  loyalty 
to  their  own  country  is  their  highest 
obligation,  and  there  is  nothing  in  their 
religion    which    practically    limits    that 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       115 

obligation,  or  subordinates  it  to  anything 
higher.  The  reUgion  of  all  these  warring 
Europeans,  except  the  Turks,  is  there- 
fore a  type  of  nationalism  baptized  as 
Christianity,  but  not  entitled  to  the 
name.  There  is  no  allegiance  recognized 
as  really  superior  to  that  required  by 
the   nation. 

As  we  saw  in  the  sixth  chapter.  Gen- 
eral Bernhardi  and  the  other  pubUcists 
who  have  been  formulating  Hohen- 
zollernism,  have  distinctly  recognized 
this  principle  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
nation,  and  have  worked  out  its  impli- 
cations in  detail,  making  it  clear  that 
nationalism  is  the  supreme  religion,  and 
that  Christianity  holds  a  wholly  subor- 
dinate place  in  the  nation's  life.  The 
other  nations  have  not  so  frankly  faced 
the  truth,  but  it  is  practically  implied 
wherever  militarism   rules. 

We  often  hear  the  remark  that  all 


116   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

these  nations  worship  the  same  God. 
That  is  far  from  the  truth.  Each  one 
worships  a  God  of  its  own.  "But  is  it 
not  the  God  of  the  Bible?''  it  is 
demanded.  Which  of  them?  In  the 
Bible  there  are  "gods  many  and  lords 
many";  the  God  of  Jacob  and  his 
mother  was  not  the  God  of  Isaiah;  the 
God  of  Deborah  was  not  the  God  of 
Dorcas ;  the  God  of  Joshua  and  Jehu  was 
not  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.  They  may  all  have  been 
called  by  the  same  name,  but  they  were 
not  the  same  character.  And  people 
who  profess  to  follow  the  religion  of  the 
Bible  are  apt  to  choose  the  God  whose 
character  best  suits  their  purposes.  So 
it  has  always  been  with  the  nations.  In 
a  large  part  of  the  Old  Testament  the 
conception  of  tribal  gods  prevails.  The 
Hebrews  had  their  own  God,  Jehovah, 
and    each    of    the    surrounding    peoples 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       117 

had  its  own  god.  Jehovah  cherished 
and  protected  his  own  people  and  fought 
for  them  against  the  gods  and  the  people 
of  the  other  tribes.  These  other  gods 
and  people  were  all  his  enemies  and  he 
was  their  enemy.  But  this  particular 
God  of  the  Hebrews  was  conceived  to 
be  superior  to  all  the  rest,  and  under 
his  rule  the  people  were  constantly  at 
war  with  the  other  nations  round  about 
them,  maintaining  the  most  exclusive 
and  aggressive  policy,  and  always  ready 
to  conquer  and  enslave  those  weaker 
than  themselves.  It  was  not  until  they 
had  suffered  many  sore  defeats  and  had 
been  overthrown  and  humiliated  and 
scattered  by  nations  stronger  than  them- 
selves, that  they  began  to  comprehend 
the  folly  of  their  tribal  religionism,  and  to 
lay  hold  upon  the  larger  truth  of  Mono- 
theism, with  its  corollaries  of  the  unity 
of  the  race  and  the  brotherhood  of  man. 


118   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

These  truths  which  the  prophets  dimly 
discerned  and  which  came  to  their  glori- 
ous revelation  in  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  were  far  from  the  thoughts  of  the 
early  Hebrews;  and  the  Scriptures  in 
which  their  crude  theology  is  recorded 
set  before  us  conceptions  of  national  rela- 
tionships which  are  not  much  above  the 
moralities  of  the  wild  woods.  When, 
therefore,  nations  whose  ideals  are  mili- 
taristic wish  to  furnish  themselves  with 
a  religion,  and  are  directed  to  the  Bible 
which  is  guaranteed  to  be  infallibly 
inspired  and  equally  divine  and  authori- 
tative in  every  part,  they  are  able  easily 
to  furnish  themselves  with  conceptions 
of  God  and  religion  which  harmonize 
perfectly  with  the  most  unscrupulous 
and  predacious  policies.  This,  beyond 
a  question,  is  what  militaristic  nations 
professing  Christianity  have  always  done. 
For  confessional  and  liturgical  purposes 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   119 

they  may  adhere  to  the  Christian  God, 
but  for  the  stern  work  of  war  they  go 
back  in  their  thought  to  Jehovah  Sabaoth. 
He  is  their  God.  They  can  pray  to 
him  and  sing  anthems  to  him  with  no 
misgiving.  Hymns  of  hate  and  battle 
songs  harmonize  perfectly  with  his  char- 
acter. It  is  easy  for  them  to  believe 
that  he  is  their  national  God  and  that 
they  can  rely  on  him  to  aid  them  in  their 
wars,  whether  of  defense  or  of  conquest. 
It  is  not,  then,  so  strange  that  so  much 
religion  should  be  mingled  with  war. 
The  belligerents  are  not  all  praying  to 
the  same  God.  Each  people  is  praying 
to  its  own  God.  No  matter  what  the 
lips  may  say,  no  matter  what  names 
may  be  used,  every  militaristic  nation 
in  its  heart  believes  in  and  worships  a 
tribal  God.  It  would  be  absurd  for  the 
Germans,  if  they  believed  that  the 
French  and  the  Belgian  and  the  Russians 


120   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

and  the  English  are  all  children  of  their 
Father  God,  to  pray  to  him  for  strength 
and  skill  to  go  out  and  kill  their  brothers. 
They  do  not  believe  anything  of  the 
kind,  whatever  their  creeds  may  make 
them  say.  They  believe  that  the  God 
to  whom  they  pray  is  their  God;  they 
are  the  children  of  his  love,  and  that 
the  others  are  his  foes  and  theirs.  Their 
real  God  is  a  tribal  God.  It  is  the  only 
kind  of  God  that  any  militaristic  nation 
ever  did  or  ever  can  worship. 

The  tragedy  of  the  situation  is  in  the 
fact  that  the  Christian  church  which  is 
responsible  for  the  religious  life  of  these 
nations  has  permitted  them  to  propa- 
gate these  tribal  religions  and  still  to 
call  themselves  Christians.  For  the 
Bible,  which  contains  these  ethnic  ele- 
ments, contains  also  the  Christian  faith 
up  to  which  they  led,  and  in  which  they 
merged,   and   which   absolutely   repeals 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       121 

and  abolishes  them.  For  while  Chris- 
tianity grows  out  of  the  Semitic  religions 
and  incorporates  their  higher  truths,  its 
central  principle  is  a  direct  contradic- 
tion of  all  the  tribalisms  and  partialisms 
and  particularisms  on  which  the  old 
faiths  had  been  grounded  and  out  of 
which  war  had  grown.  Its  central  idea 
is  universalism,  not  in  the  narrow  ecclesi- 
astical sense,  but  in  the  sense  which 
makes  human  relationship  universal  in- 
stead of  domestic  or  racial;  which 
teaches  us  to  speak  the  word  mankind, 
which  puts  humanity  above  nationality 
as  the  supreme  object  of  allegiance. 
This  is  the  differentia  of  the  Christian 
morality,  the  ground  of  its  claim  to 
the  acceptance  of  the  human  race.  All 
the  traditions  of  its  origin  culminate 
here.  The  angelic  chorus  announcing 
the  birth  of  the  Prince  of  Peace  sang 
"Glory  to  God  in  the  Highest,  and  on 


122   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

earth  peace,  good  will  to  men."  The 
keynote  is  the  promise  of  peace  upon 
earth,  and  peace  was  to  come  through 
the  presence  on  earth  of  brotherly  men, 
friendly  men.  The  suspicions  and  fears 
and  enmities  that  had  kept  men  apart 
were  to  cease;  the  day  so  long  looked 
for  had  dawned,  when  men  of  all  tribes 
and  nations  were  to  dwell  together  in 
unity,  with  none  to  hurt  or  destroy  in 
all  God's  holy  mountain. 

There  were  to  be  no  enemies,  no  enmi- 
ties, even  the  wild  creatures  were  to 
lose  their  ferocity;  the  wolf  would 
dwell  with  the  lamb  and  the  leopard 
would  lie  down  with  the  kid. 

And  when  the  Prince  of  Peace  himself 
came  forth  to  take  up  the  task  com- 
mitted to  him,  his  first  word  had  the 
same  great  import:  "The  Kingdom  of 
heaven  is  here."  It  was  the  Kingdom  of 
a  Father.    Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven, 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       123 

Thy  Kingdom  cornel  It  was  a  King- 
dom in  which  all  citizens  are  brothers.  ^ 

This  is  the  primal,  central,  command- 
ing truth  of  the  Christian  religion  — 
the  one  truth  which  those  who  under- 
take to  represent  Jesus  Christ  on  the 
earth  are  bound  to  make  the  burden  of 
their  message.  It  is  a  truth  that  wipes 
out  all  distinctions  of  caste,  that  annuls 
all  repugnances  of  race,  that  breaks 
down  the  barriers  of  nationality.  Read 
the  record.  It  was  a  Canaanitish  woman 
who  won  the  highest  praise  for  her  faith ; 
the  shining  instance  of  the  central  vir- 
tue of  the  Kingdom  was  a  good  Samari- 
tan; a  Roman  centurion  ranked  high 
in  its  loyalties,  and  its  messengers  were 
sent  forth  from  Olivet  to  teach  all 
nations. 

If  anything  is  central  in  Christianity 
it  is  this  obliteration  of  the  lines  of 
division  between  races  and  nationalities^ 


124   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  BOAD 

and  the  inclusion  of  the  world  in  one 
brotherhood.  Whatever  other  truths 
might  be  made  subordinate  or  secondary, 
this  truth  of  the  divine  Fatherhood  and 
the  human  Brotherhood  were  to  be  lifted 
into  the  light  and  held  before  the  thought 
of  the  world.  To  this  truth  the  life 
of  Jesus  gave  marvelous  significance. 
What  he  taught  that  he  was.  All  ranks 
and  races  and  conditions  found  in  him 
a  friend.  Nothing  can  be  clearer  than 
that  those  who  become  his  true  dis- 
ciples and  are  made  partakers  of  his  spirit 
will  find  themselves  in  fraternal  rela- 
tions with  all  the  children  of  men.  It 
would  seem  that  in  the  twentieth  century 
after  his  birth,  after  sixty  generations 
of  his  representatives  have  spent  their 
lives  in  teaching  what  was  supposed  to 
be  his  truth  and  nearly  five  hundred 
millions  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth 
have  been  enrolled  as  his  adherents,  this 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   125 

fact  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  ought  to 
be  so  clearly  understood  that  it  would 
be  made  the  foundation  of  all  human 
relationships. 

And  yet  it  is  the  amazing  fact  that 
today,  in  the  earth,  twenty  or  thirty 
millions  of  the  people  who  bear  his 
name  are  not  only  wholly  oblivious  of 
the  fact  of  brotherhood,  but  are  so  in- 
flamed with  hatred  that  they  are  ranged 
in  battle  lines  trying  to  kill  one  another. 
Already  two  or  three  millions  of  so-called 
Christians  have  fallen  in  this  fratricidal 
strife. 

Does  not  this  make  it  evident  that 
the  tribalism  which  Jesus  came  to  exter- 
minate has  triumphed  over  the  fraternal- 
ism  he  came  to  incarnate  and  reveal? 
After  nineteen  centuries  of  organized 
Christianity  its  representatives  in  most 
of  the  great  nations  of  the  earth  are 
bowing  down  in  the  camps  of  the  tribal 


126   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

gods  and  praying  for  power  to  maim 
and  mangle  and  slay  their  brother  men. 
How  utterly  has  the  law  of  life  which  he 
lived  to  incarnate  and  died  to  enforce  been 
set  at  naught  by  the  nations  of  the  earth ! 
In  other  realms,  as  we  have  seen,  it 
has  proved  its  power;  it  has  won  great 
victories  over  hate  and  greed;  but  the 
nations  have  despised  and  rejected  it; 
they  would  not  have  this  Man  to  reign 
over  them.  The  churches  which  have 
claimed  to  represent  him,  have  been 
faithless  here.  Ever  since  the  days  of 
Constantine  they  have  been  largely 
subservient  to  the  civil  power.  Some- 
times they  have  sought  to  assert  their 
freedom,  but  often  the  need  of  its  favor 
has  clouded  their  judgment.  In  most 
of  the  Christian  lands  they  have  been 
allied  with  it.  And  the  alliance  has  kept 
them  in  a  dependent  and  subject  con- 
dition.     Their   thinking   was   naturally 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       127 

shaped  by  the  ideas  of  the  state,  as  the 
dyer's  hand  is  subdued  to  what  it  works 
in,  and  theology  ceased  to  be  an  inter- 
pretation of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Father 
and  became  a  reflection  of  human  abso- 
lutism. Augustine  was  the  great  system 
builder  of  Christian  theology,  and  his 
ruling  ideas  are  borrowed  from  Roman 
imperialism.  When  the  dogmatic  sys- 
tem finally  gets  itself  shaped,  with  its 
articulated  framework  of  laws  and  penal- 
ties and  hereditary  depravity  and  impu- 
tation and  substitution,  it  is  very  far 
from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  or  the 
Fifteenth  of  Luke  or  the  Fourteenth  of 
John.  The  gospel  of  the  Kingdom  with 
its  universal  Fatherhood  and  universal 
Brotherhood  does  not  fit  into  it.  You 
cannot  preach  that  gospel  with  consist- 
ency and  cogency  in  its  application  to 
national  affairs  if  you  believe  this  theol-x 
ogy.    You    cannot    make    men    believe 


128   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

•^that  all  men  are  brothers  and  ought  to 
live  in  peace  together,  when  you  have 
taught  them  either  that  all  the  unbap- 
tized,  or  that  all  the  non-elect,  or  that 
all  the  unregenerate  are  God's  enemies 
whom  he  hates  and  means  to  punish 
everlastingly.  These  are  "vessels  of 
wrath  fitted  unto  destruction."  And 
where  so  much  scope  is  left  for  the  exer- 
cise of  the  divine  antipathy  in  dealing 
with  obdurate  men,  it  is  unreasonable 
to  expect  that  men  will  themselves  sup- 
press all  their  enmities  and  resentments 
and  treat  one  another  as  brothers.    What 

^  is  the  use  of  telling  men  to  love  their 
enemies  when  they  know  that  God  is 
going  to  plunge  all  his  enemies  into  a 
fiery  pit  and  watch  them  burning  there 
eternally?  Do  you  expect  men  to  be 
better  than  God?'  It  is  a  vain  expecta- 
tion. And  when  they  get  your  theology 
thoroughly    digested,    and    its    implica- 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD   129 

tions  all  worked  out,  they  will  tell  you 
at  once  that  the  morality  of  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  is  a  visionary  scheme ; 
that  it  can  never  be  made  to  work  until 
the  Millennium,  that  force  is  the  only 
arbiter  of  human  relationships,  and  that 
the  ultimate  right  is  the  right  of  the 
strongest.  This,  on  the  whole,  is  the 
practical  belief  of  Christendom  thus 
far.  Industry,  politics,  internationalism 
are  founded  on  competition,  and  compe- 
tition gives  the  victory  not  to  the  kind- 
est but  to  the  strongest. 

Such  is  the  moral  equipment  with 
which  the  church  has  furnished  Christen- 
dom. It  is  not  true  that  nothing  higher 
or  better  than  this  has  been  contributed 
by  the  church  to  human  society.  Ele- 
ments and  influences  of  a  genuinely 
Christian  character  have  always,  in  her 
darkest  days,  been  illuminating  the 
world.    In  a  preceding  chapter  we  have 


130   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

sought  to  make  record  of  these  beneficent 
achievements.  In  spite  of  her  failures 
the  Christian  church  has  still  been  the 
most  benign  force  of  history.  Wide 
realms  of  human  association  have  felt 
her  softening  and  harmonizing  influ- 
ence. She  has  kept  the  New  Testament 
in  the  hands  of  men  and  the  words  of 
Jesus  and  his  life  and  death  have  made 
their  own  mighty  impression,  in  spite 
of  the  beggarly  elements  with  which 
they  are  often  mingled.  The  worst 
trouble  has  been  that  she  has  given  them 
to  the  world  in  a  Book  which  she  has 
declared  to  be  equally  divine  and  au- 
thoritative in  every  part,  so  that  these 
words  of  spirit  and  life  are  reduced  to 
the  level  of  the  heathenism  they  were 
spoken  to  confute  and  overthrow.  And 
in  all  her  teaching  the  church  has  incor- 
porated large  elements  of  the  tribalism 
and  the  egoistic  imperialism  whose  bread 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       131 

she  has  been  eating,  which  is  the  flat 
contradiction  of  the  doctrine  of  Christ, 
and  which  is  the  eflScient  cause  of  war. 
Thus  she  has  put  herself  into  an  ambigu- 
ous attitude  which  cripples  her  moral 
leadership  and  makes  her  impotent  in 
this  which  ought  to  be  her  day  of  power. 
She  has  the  word  to  speak  which  would 
put  an  end  to  war,  but  she  is  not  pre- 
pared to  speak  it,  and  the  world  would 
not  listen  if  she  did. 

Has  not  the  church,  as  well  as  the 

nations,  come  to  the  forks  of  the  road  ? 

Is  there  not  quite  as  much  need  in  the 
administration  of  the  churches  as  in  the 
policies  of  the  nations  of  a  radical 
reconstruction  both  of  theory  and  of 
practice?  Is  not  this  war  a  convincing 
proof  that  there  is  something  fearfully  and 
fatally  wrong  with  the  Christian  church?/ 
And  has  it  not  become  sufficiently  clear 
in  the  discussion  that  the  radical  trouble 


132   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

with  the  church  is  that  she  has  ceased 
to  be  Christian? 

Indeed  we  might  say  that  she  has 
never  been  Christian.  The  organiza- 
tion which  was  formed  in  Jerusalem  by 
the  disciples  immediately  after  the  de- 
parture of  Jesus  started  out  on  lines  quite 
other  than  those  upon  which  he  had  been 
leading  them.  "Apologetics/'  says  Dr. 
McGiffert,  "was  the  imperative  need  of 
the  hour,  not  simply  the  proclamation  of 
^  the  Gospel,  but  the  defense  of  it  and  the 
defense  of  Jesus  himself,  the  preacher 
of  it.  Thus  the  emphasis  was  changed 
from  the  gospel  itself  to  the  evidence  for 
its  truth ;  from  the  message  to  the  mes- 
senger. Not  the  fatherhood  of  God, 
but  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  formed 
the  burden  of  the  preaching  of  the 
apostles,  and  so  the  Master's  estimate 
of  values  was  reversed."  ^ 

1  "  The  Apostolic  Age,"  p.  54. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       133 

That  shifted  emphasis  has  never  been 
restored.  The  church  has  always  been 
much  more  concerned  to  apologize  for 
Jesus  than  to  deliver  his  message.  If, 
instead  of  arguing  to  prove  his  authority, 
it  had  obeyed  his  parting  word  and 
taught  the  things  he  had  given  it  to 
teach,  the  Kingdom  would  have  come  ere 
now  with  power.  The  word  itself  has 
authority  when  it  is  clearly  spoken. 
\  The  one  tragic  fact  of  history  is  the 
lapse  of  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ 
from  her  vocation  —  the  failure  to  grasp 
and  enforce  the  central  truth  of  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Father,  which  Jesus 
lived  and  died  to  reveal/ It  is  for  this 
reason  that  she  herself  has  been  torn 
into  sectarian  fragments,  and  bitter  and 
bloody  wars  have  been  fought  within 
her  own  precincts,  by  Arian  against 
Athanasian,  and  Calixtine  against  Ta- 
borite  and  Protestant  against  Catholic; 


134   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

it  is  for  this  reason  that  she  has  had  so 
Uttle  power  to  stay  the  strife  of  social 
classes;  it  is  for  this  reason  that  she 
has  throughout  the  centuries  been  the 
apologist  and  sometimes  the  instigator 
of  the  wars  between  nations  which  have 
devastated  Christendom.  Today  she 
stands  dumb  and  despairing  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  worst  moral  disaster  that  his- 
tory records.  Is  there,  for  her,  today, 
any  word  of  admonition  ? 

It  would  seem  that  the  first  word  of  her 
Master,  which  was  also  the  first  word  of 
his  forerunner,  must  have  some  signifi- 
cance for  her:  "Repent,  change  your 
mind,  for  the  Kingdom  of  heaven  is 
here."  This  debacle  of  civilization  will 
be  but  a  ghastly  horror,  an  eclipse  of 
faith,  if  it  do  not  usher  in  a  new  day 
with  new  international  relationships,  new 
bonds  of  unity,  new  guarantees  of  friend- 
ship,   new   hopes   of   permanent   peace. 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       135 

If  such  a  day  as  that  is  coming  the  Chris- 
tian church  ought  to  have  the  vision  to 
see  it  and  the  heart  to  meet  it.  She 
will  have  done  far  less  to  bring  it  in  than 
she  ought  to  have  done;  it  will  come, 
if  it  comes,  rather  as  the  result  of  a  fear- 
ful retribution,  than  as  the  willing  accept- 
ance of  the  law  of  life. 

But  when  the  nations,  taught  by  what- 
ever fiery  tuition,  conclude  that  the  way 
of  Christ  is  the  right  way  to  live  together, 
the  church  ought  to  be  ready  to  confirm 
their  decision  and  to  strengthen  their 
purpose.  But  she  ought  also  to  be  able 
to  see  that  if  she  would  be  of  any  service 
in  this  new  day  some  radical  reconstruc- 
tions will  have  to  take  place  in  her 
doctrine  and  in  her  life.  She  will  have 
to  eliminate  the  tribalism  and  the  heath- 
enism and  the  particularism  of  her  theol- 
ogy. She  will  have  to  tell  the  truth  about 
the  Bible  and  put  the  life-giving  spirit 


136   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

above  the  brain-befogging  and  conscience- 
clogging  letter.  She  will  have  to  get  rid 
of  her  intolerant  and  divisive  sectari- 
anism and  quit  unchurching  and  cursing 
men  for  differences  of  theological  opin- 
ion. She  will  have  to  cast  into  the  abyss 
a  good  share  of  her  aberglaube,  and  her 
ecclesiastical  flummery,  and  come  back 
to  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ.  And 
above  all  she  will  have  to  take  the  great 
central  truth  of  the  divine  Fatherhood 
with  all  its  corollaries  and  make  it  the 
heart  of  her  teaching  and  the  inspira- 
tion of  her  life. 

This  means  some  tremendous  changes, 
no  doubt.  Does  anybody  think  that 
the  church  can  meet  the  issues  now 
impending  without  some  tremendous 
changes?  This  war  is  making,  has  al- 
ready made,  some  tremendous  changes 
in  the  whole  framework  of  society.  The 
thing  that  amazes  me  is  that  so  many 


THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD       137 

men  fail  to  see  how  portentous  these 
changes  must  needs  be.  They  reason 
about  it  as  though  the  world  were  going 
on  after  this  war  is  over  in  the  same  old 
groove,  at  the  same  old  gait,  talking  the 
same  old  patter,  tramping  up  the  same 
old  blind  alleys.  No.  It  will  never 
again  be  the  same  old  world.  A  great 
voice  is  saying  out  of  heaven,  "Behold, 
I  make  all  things  new.'* 

We  are  often  told  that  the  things  which 
seem  to  be  our  only  hope  of  deliverance 
from  hell  on  earth  —  such  as  a  League 
of  Peace  with  an  international  police 
force  —  are  not  to  be  hoped  for  at  the 
close  of  the  war  because  "if  it  should 
come  so  soon  it  would  certainly  be  one 
of  the  most  astounding  developments 
of  history."  Certainly  it  will.  What 
else  should  we  expect?  This  war  is 
the  most  astounding  development  of 
history ;   should  not  the  reactions  which 


138   THE  FORKS  OF  THE  ROAD 

follow  the  war  be  equally  astounding? 
Would  anything  else  be  adequate?  Is 
Providence  going  to  cure  traumatism  of 
this  sort  with  court  plaster  and  rose 
water?  I  think  it  will  take  some  heroic 
surgery. 

This  is  the  way  of  life  for  the  nations, 
and  there  is  no  other  salvation  for  the 
church.  Is  it  too  much  to  hope  that 
there  are  men  of  vision  who  will  discern 
this  time? 


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